Shifting Gears
by Crimson-Eyed-Angel99
Summary: The Winter Soldier approached Bruce Banner in a coffee-shop in New York, sat down, and stared at the man for a good five minutes. Both of them were used to assessing threats and five minutes wasn't long in Winter Soldier time. "I need to find the captain."
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: obviously, I own nothing. Really.

Idea: 'Can I turn this road trip into a starting gate for Civil War' or 'How Cap 3 could go.'

Note: I've seen both new movies and read Winter Soldier through Captain America Lives! all of Brubaker's run in comic continuity. If Bucky seems out of movie character, that's why. Comic!Bucky is a pottymouth and a fighter. I'm still trying to properly merge them. Don't know yet what the plot will look like on this either. If there is any background ships, it'll be Sharon/Steve and Wintalia but it won't be a central driving force. This story is getting written because the comics haven't didn't give me a Steve and Bucky post-WS conversation yet. Enjoy!

###

The Winter Soldier approached Bruce Banner in a coffeeshop in New York, sat down, and stared at the man for a good five minutes. Both of them were used to assessing threats and five minutes wasn't long in Winter Soldier time. Finally, Banner took a breath and leaned forward, setting down the smartphone he'd been fiddling with.

His masters hadn't bothered to teach the Winter Soldier brands, but they had been clear that shiny, oblong 'smart'phones could communicate verbally or with written messages, with no need for cords, landlines, or even sound. This smartphone was one of the most indestructible-looking Bucky had ever seen. Check mark - he had the right person.

"I know some people who can help with PTSD," Banner said.

The acronym wasn't one the Winter Soldier recognized, but he didn't frown. His handlers had left out anything they didn't think he needed to know and, apparently, 'PTSD' wasn't a threat to him. It could be an Avengers onboarding program.

Ignore PTSD. He needed to ask this correctly.

"The punk."

Banner blinked. "Excuse me?"

"You know where the punk is."

Banner stared. Staring made all the Italian in his features stand out; this man was _European_ and the last alliances Bucky could remember with what had filtered back into his mind was… muddied. Italians had been good in the war when he died, but good for Axis, and that was bad, and bad in the Cold War, but was that bad for the Soviet or bad for the States, and no one seemed to care now, not in the way they had before during the war. _All the alliances kept changing and no one was paying attention in the streets of America. _So what did it matter if Banner was Italian?

Everybody was something in America. Bucky was something. Some thing.

"Do you know what punk is?" Banner was asking, carefully.

"Captain. Cap," the Winter Soldier clarified.

"Ah geez." Banner's posture became tighter; he ran a hand through his hair, shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

"What is it?" Responding to Banner's discomfort, Bucky shifted his posture to make the knife on his thigh more accessible, metal shoulder braced into the window – he could break it in seconds if necessary and be halfway down the street before anyone had a bead on him.

But Banner was staring at him, hand in mid-hair-ruffle.

"Whoa, so, I missed something," Banner said. "Why are you all… battle-ready?"

Oh. He relaxed some of the tension in his shoulder. Fidgeting was probably a social cue for discomfort. Damn, he used to be good at those. Didn't he? Natalia had been good at them. She taught him some he didn't know and he had taught her how to use them to kill. Kill over and over and... don't lose focus. The Hulk knows where Cap is.

"I… misread," he replied, because Banner still looked like a man who thought he was handling a time bomb. "Where is Captain America."

"Okay, it's— I'm just kinda… hiding from Stark right now," Banner said, grinning. Tight grin, _nervous_ grin. Okay. Fearful grin? A little. And yet that wasn't alarm.

"I don't need to see the iron man. I need to see the captain." Thank God they were in a world of codenames and monikers. If he had to tell this man he needed to see 'Steve' over and over, it was going to turn into a litany of names: 'Steve,' 'Peggy,' 'Fury,' 'Dugan,' and _everyone he had ever known._

"Yeah, I'd have to go to Stark, to find out where Cap is, and I don't want to do that. Memo on me is I'm not the best guy to go to for Avengers calls. Especially when I'm hiding. Besides, I heard Steve was out in the Midwest doing something for a couple months."

"What state?"

Banner was about to tell him, then thought better of it. "Airports have changed since you were—"

Bucky remembered then, one of the jogged pieces of memory coming to the surface. There had been several missions, recent ones, where he had to get through American security. It got so bad they took off his arm and transported it in a separate agent's carry-on once, choosing the notoriety of a one-armed man over a metal-armed man. Still.

"What state?" he repeated.

"…look, you'd be picked up as soon as you got into an airport. You go to Stark Tower, he'd tell Steve you were around."

The Winter Soldier in him began to get annoyed. "I don't care and I'm not going to the iron man. If you won't tell me, $%* ing take me."

-And sometimes other memories got jarred loose. He remembered parts of how he used to talk in the trenches, maybe how people had spoken around him. His mind felt like a jigsaw built on a sea of lava.

The expletive didn't seem to bother Banner.

"Can't. The big guy has a no-fly radius so wide I had to take a slow boat to Singapore with Enya and Celtic music on full blast." The moment the words left his mouth, Banner rolled his eyes heavenward. "I've been away from the man six months, put me in the same city, and I'm poking _myself._"

"The big guy," Bucky echoed, the name odd.

Banner looked at him somewhat skeptically. "The other guy? The reason my name even showed up on your 'visit' list?"

The scientist was stalling; this was all stalling, and it was working. Bucky was beginning to lose focus on the mission with the way Banner kept dancing around the issue. Sliver of paranoia began to pinch at the back of his mind. If this was stalling, Banner knew what he needed to do and wasn't doing it. Banner understood what that meant when you were facing the Winter Soldier. But the man wasn't angry or he would be uncontrollable and green. The phone. Banner had contacted someone. And it wasn't going to be anyone Bucky wanted to see.

So he stood, so abruptly several people from other tables looked over at them.

"What state is the captain in?" the Winter Soldier asked. Demanded. Asked. It was asking when no one was being slammed into a car door, or shot, or at knife point, or garroted, or sniped, or – there were more ways. If only the ways he had rescued people didn't come back and intermingle with the ways he had murdered people. Not all of them were even the Winter Soldier; some were acts during war. Steve's right-hand man with both his hands dripping with gore.

Banner had stood on the other side of the table and just finished quietly assuring the people around them that Bucky had just gotten back from deployment a few weeks ago; he was still pretty shook up. People were moving away. Not in a panic, but moving away.

"Barnes," Banner said quietly. "There are people around here, innocent people. You're not on a mission and I'm not trying to hurt you. I called Stark, okay? Avengers ID cards will call Stark Tower when activated."

He hadn't known that. Well, hadn't known technology could do that, which made sense because Hydra worked in basements and bank vaults and in the bottom of snowy ravines and why would they have access to advanced technology?

"Not interested in talking to SHIELD," he said. Not interested in being repossessed by Hydra or their many affiliates, either.

"After three months ago, who is anymore?" Banner said. "Anyway, he'll be able to get you to Steve, one way or another."

Which reminded Bucky of something important.

"You knew my name."

"Hard not to. Even in Singapore, Stark's having Pepper send me messages. 'If you see anyone with a metal arm,' 'who the hell is named Bucky,' 'please dial 999 for traumatized assassin sightings…' and they were worse than that on occasion. So yeah, I know who you are."

Traumatized. Well, that probably wasn't Steve's word for it, it didn't mean it was what Steve thought, even if Bucky wanted to crawl into the hole of the word and die there. His last sighting of his friend had been dragging him out of the wreckage of the helicarrier, having just done to him everything the helicarrier couldn't, and then almost drowning him. Memory loss was no excuse. It didn't feel like he could start moving again until he saw Steve and instead he was sitting here with Banner.

"So you're the Winter Soldier!" came a smarmy voice from behind him and Bucky knew, even before turning, that he didn't like Tony Stark. When he didn't get up, Stark circled the table, nudged Banner as he kept one eye on Bucky. This was an expressive man, professional enough to make wearing a black 'Metallica' shirt and jeans look like a suit.

"Thought he'd be taller," Stark said.

"You thought _I'd_ be taller," Banner said moodily.

"If you asked me out to coffee more often, maybe I wouldn't bring the quinjet when you activate your ID card. But not everything's about you so HEY, pretty and traumatized, what are you looking for with the big, green, not-Thor's-brother machine?"

That had been a _very_ quick sentence – Stark talked like the talk show hosts he had heard from time to time on assignment. A million miles an hour, jumping from topic to topic like trains, always laughing. The question demanded a quick comeback and Bucky replied: "I'm looking for the captain" almost before he had processed the request.

The pair glanced at each other. Banner made a 'what can you do' face at Tony.

"He spoke English a moment ago. Barnes?" This was in Russian. "_You switched, can you speak English for the Stark?_"

"_The Stark is obnoxious. If you don't tell me I am going to the airport."_

"You won't be able to get through without documents," Banner said, back in English. "You ditched Hydra. If what Steve's said is true, they don't give you a severance package for that."

"We'd have to run a full physical just to prove that you _are _Bucky Barnes," Stark jumped in. "You could be any… traumatized defecting mercenary, it's not outside possibility with the way things are now."

"I'm a veteran," Bucky muttered. It felt clever to say it, even as the words bit back in his throat. He was a veteran of all wars, on all sides, and a prisoner of war and guilty of the greatest war crimes. This conversation with Banner was the longest he had spoken with a civilian not encountered on a mission in… in decades. Or was it just years? Decades? The world felt very unsafe to be talking to people and he was getting no closer to finding Steve. He had an apartment and he should go back there. All right, not an apartment, he had been sleeping on the roof of an apartment complex for the past week and it was time he got back there.

Maybe steal some brandy and painkillers, if he could find them. The leg was still bothering him from the disaster in the helicarrier. Leaving his masters meant leaving cyro, which meant leaving medical care. His only real concern was what would happen when the arm ran out of charge and it was going to run out of charge. It had been whirring, overheating (which for the arm, meant freezing internally to compensate for the heat), and even exhibited false start-ups a few times. While he wasn't sure what everything in him looked like internally, he didn't have a lot of upper body mass that wasn't involved with the arm. When it overheated, the sensation spread into his chest almost immediately. It would run out of charge eventually, and he couldn't go back to his masters to charge it.

"Losing ya, Barnes?" Stark asked and Bucky realized, with some surprise, that he had sat down at some point in thinking about his leg and cough and arm. He stood again quickly, forcing Stark to take a step back in alarm. The man recovered quickly.

"Come back to the tower," Stark said. "Cap'll come running back if he hears you're here."

"And I suppose you'll be wanting me to come along for that," Banner said, defeated before the question was even asked.

"What, you think I'm going to have trouble with My Chemical Romance? Nat's there, she knows him. It should be fine. Jarvis already put in a call to Steve to let him know."

Jarvis. The Winter Soldier's masters had thought about taking out Stark once, so at least Bucky knew about the A.I. Still. It would be nice if someone used a real phone once in a while; it would be nice if everything happened… _slower_. 'As fast as possible' in 1945 had been a lot slower than this. He had assumed that being the Winter Soldier was most of the speed; that he was moving faster than everyone because of his training but no, he was moving faster because he only had one stream of thought to run along. Everyone else was texting and jumping tracks and grabbing data and Bucky was point and shoot. He was still the best at his job. Other people were just good at lots of jobs.

He was _drifting _again, he realized with a start. Stark was on the phone now; Banner was looking anxious. This wasn't going to plan. What the hell was he going to do, ride back to Stark Tower? Wait for Steve and hope that worked out? No. Forget them and forget hoping.

Amid Tony's protests, began to leave. He heard the man's tone change as he spoke into his communicator and almost smiled. Like he wouldn't plan an escape route before ever approaching Banner? It wasn't his first time getting in and out of a situation. The only difference was that no one was dead. Everything broke down nicely into thought bites – actionable thought bites that required completion and _nothing else_.

Walk round the corner.

Step into the alley.

Hand-over-hand up a fire escape.

Climb through the open apartment window.

Peaceably exit the occupied home before anyone sees.

Step into the hallway.

Stairs to the basement.

Retrieve and change clothes from the laundry.

Ditch the hat.

Leave the apartment complex through the front door.

Go 'home' on foot.

He walked until he reached the apartment complex and easily scaled the height. Another eight hours here and he would move. Steve was somewhere in the Midwest and would come back soon. There was always the bird man Steve had been with. Ah. Memory slid in another piece. But he had tried to kill that man, very vehemently, and going to him for help probably wasn't going to result in anything good.

The arm whirred and whined as he settled into a clandestine corner of the apartment complex rooftop. The sound of cooling. Within four hours, it would be absurdly cold; enough to trigger the cough. He had tried to take it off once, it got so cold being an amputee sounded better, but he had become too afraid he wouldn't be able to get it on again and stopped. If the arm was off, he was vulnerable. The chill might get into his heart and finish what cyro hadn't. Besides, he probably needed a sterile environment or he risked getting dirt, bugs, or who knew what into his bloodstream.

It got cold, which was always familiar, and he slept.

###

…if it entertains, tell me, and I'll try to think of how to move it onwards.


	2. Chapter 2

Still doing this! :)

#

"He was here and you didn't stop him? How did he look?"

Facing an enraged Captain America, fresh off the plane from where he had been monitoring a political rally in Wyoming, wasn't the most concerning thing on Tony's agenda, but it did make the List of Concerning Things he had for the day. Unlike most people who came to him with complaints, he couldn't blockade Steve at the lobby until he had time to answer the question posed. Instead, Tony spread his hands, shrugged, and plowed into a response.

"Ah, well, I wouldn't put him on with the Kardashians anytime soon, but he looked pretty good. Bruce? Thoughts for Cap?"

"You remember how you looked after the helicarrier?" Bruce asked Steve, having gotten himself as far as physically possible from the conflict by working on something in the back of the laboratory, behind lots of breakable screens. Lucky. "Barnes was that and he's sleeping rough."

"Where was he going when he left you?" Steve asked.

The conversation had gone too long without a Stark, so Tony jumped in again: "Going, dunno, but Hawkeye turned up a lead on a rooftop a couple of days ago. Someone scuffling around, we got some footage and, voila," Tony spun the screen he had been pulling up around so the image faced Cap. "Is this your card?"

The image was grainy and visible in the green-black of night vision goggles, but the thermal imaging showed a warm body with the right arm ending just about the shoulder, the prosthetic replacement visible as just a metal sheen. The body was braced against a wall, thermally-invisible arm drawn against its chest tightly.

"Safe to say he's run out of other options," Tony said. "If he's forgoing even shelters, garages, fire escapes, alleys—"

"Someone could find him and kill him," Steve said immediately. "Hydra would be looking for him there. When are we picking him up?"

"Another point we're not sure on. Hawkeye's trailing him and Nat's keeping tabs on Hawkeye."

"He'll notice—"

"He hasn't yet."

That shut Steve up for a moment, thinking of all the reasons an accomplished and talented assassin wouldn't notice that someone was on his tail. Then, shrugging off the worry: "Give me his last known. I'll get Falcon."

"Last time you saw this guy, he threw you out of a plane."

Steve gestured at the screen, which was rerunning the footage. "Does he look like he could throw me out of a plane now?"

"Why would he seek you out now then? It's been weeks. More than weeks."

"Maybe he remembered something."

"Would he have come after you if he remembered?" Bruce asked. Tony only caught the tail end of it, Bruce was so quiet, but he could extrapolate the rest. The question hit Steve like a brick and then he just… rode it out. Confident as the ocean swallowing a thrown rock.

"Yeah. Buck would come. He'd know that I would want to see him."

"But who knows where he's been," Tony said, flipping the screen to face him again. "Because, heads up Cap, this guy is not safe and not stable."

"You don't know him."

"But I met him. And the last time _you_ met him, he kicked the cap outta you. He might've pulled you out of a river, but he was also on a _crashing helicarrier_ at the time and this guy has been a double-agent longer than Natasha. So just… chill."

Steve pulled the screen around to study the footage again. "On a rooftop."

"Well, yeah, but that was days ago. He could have checked into a hotel by now."

"Negative," Jarvis intoned over the room's invisible speakers. "No one using any of Mr. Barnes' current or former known aliases has checked into a New York-area hotel in the past forty-eight hours."

"Bucky's a sniper. He'll be on a rooftop unless he has a reason to be elsewhere," Steve said with perfect certainty.

"Won't he expect us to think that?" Bruce asked, still even-toned. The conversation hadn't interrupted his workflow at all and, not for the first time, Tony envied his concentration.

Steve shrugged with one shoulder and Tony knew that gesture from making it, under the same circumstances. Fear, uncertainty, and desperately covering both sentiments up.

"He might not remember that I know."

#

Assassin.

Well. Yes and no.

Assassins did their own footwork to find people, so Bucky was an assassin only because he killed. You couldn't expect an assassin to be very capable of research when you stuck him in a freezer whenever he wasn't actively killing and handed him materials to kill the moment he got out and then put him back in when he was done. If he started thinking about that though, he was going to end up never leaving this rooftop and that would be a problem because he had been on this rooftop sixteen hours already.

Contacting Steve, without revealing himself to Banner or Stark or SHIELD, wasn't possible.

He didn't know where the bird man who worked with Steve lived, though he could rectify that. Maybe.

He had stolen a tiny teal phone from one of the apartments below but he knew no numbers to put in it. Any phone without a number was useless; he had simply taken it to have something to do. An excuse to get off the roof.

The police knew who he was, if only by reputation, and wouldn't help him.

The more he thought about the lack of options, the more they crumbled into paranoia. By now, his masters had to know he was here. They knew and their handlers would be here any moment to pick him up, just like last time. Last time.

Last time he had gotten on a train and rode out to Brooklyn and wandered the streets and wasn't sure why until the handlers had shown up dressed as cops and no one could be trusted. Part of him was just waiting for that to happen again.

He had had some success with giving himself orders though. Orders were familiar and could be obeyed without wondering what to do about them. He needed to get off this roof, so he needed to start giving himself orders.

Get up. He got up.

Go to the stairs. He did.

Go to the street. He went.

But then things like decisions started to hit the fan: Left or right? Where are you going? How are you going to get out of this situation?

He almost went back up to the rooftop when he spotted the incongruous large windows and blocky architecture of a shopping mall, just a street or two over. Big, crowded – it would have bathrooms and it would be warm. The idea of being indoors appealed to him: his cough and the late October weather were getting along like pigeons in a submarine.

When the automatic doors slid open, a blast of warm air found its way out and Bucky slipped in, mentally assessing what the orders that got him down here hadn't double-checked. All was in order. The metal arm was covered by the coat. His original glove had been shredded in the helicarrier, so his 'hand' was in his pocket. There wasn't much sensation left in his fingers without the glove – maybe he could pick up another while he was in here. He had a hat that said 'Veterans of Foreign Wars' though and he looked like he'd seen enough action not to be questioned.

Another order echoed, one from way back: **Don't stay in one place. **

So, he rode the escalator up and walked around the second level until his leg began complaining about the exercise. Fine. He sat down on one of the benches until the order not to stay in one place burned at the back of his brain, then he moved again.

He did this for two hours until he could feel the security guards eyeing him. It rankled. He was master of stealth and he had to wear a _hat _and _limp_ and he had to keep his metal hand in his pocket to hide it, which was making his arm whirr to try and keep itself cool.

They didn't approach. Good. Let them stare.

"My boy, they _are_ going to arrest you for loitering if you don't buy something or clock in somewhere."

A man had come up next to him – big man with an extremely long and extremely red beard. He looked like a shrink or a professor; no, he looked like the kind of arrogant ass you would have to work for and not assassinate. Bucky was surprised at how fast these thoughts came to mind. Did he dislike people like this? Had he worked with people like this? The man kept pace with him. Reply. Respond. Do _something_.

"Not illegal to walk," the Winter Soldier said.

"It is a bit illegal to be you, though. The mall cops were concerned enough to contact me."

"Who the hell are you, then?"

"A concerned civilian. I have an informal arrangement with staff here to let me know when a person of your… proclivities visits."

Bucky didn't say anything. The man's voice was subtle, almost familiar, and it had a way of wrapping itself around words. Did he know this man? He would remember him, wouldn't he? This was not a man you forgot. Neither was Steve, but you managed that just fine, didn't you?

"What are you thinking about?" the man asked.

Say nothing. Say nothing. They were walking past stores he had spent the last hour walking past, yet all unfamiliar. Bath and Body Works, GameStop, a cluster of restaurants – he was starving, but as he veered towards this last, the man said quietly that Bucky didn't want to go there right now. Come back and keep walking. He did. Wait. Why did he though? He was hungry, he didn't know this man. He began to panic, even as the man changed the subject.

"Why is your hand in your pocket?"

"…"

"Why don't you take your hand out of your pocket?"

Bucky took his hand out of his pocket. It seemed like the most logical thing to do, like veering away from the food court or allowing this man to keep pace with him. The man looked at the metal hand without surprise, nodded to himself, and Bucky quickly put his hand back in the coat pocket. No one was looking at them, which was strange. They should have attracted some attention; a red-haired giant of a man in a nice suit and a homeless man in a Veterans of Foreign Wars cap, but no one was looking. After a few moments, the man asked to see his gun, inspected it, then handed it back.

"Why are you in this mall?" the man asked.

"%^&amp;* off."

"No reason but warmth and shelter then. You are a rebel without a cause, and I mean rebel in the most liberal use possible. You have already given up searching for Rogers? Tell me."

"%^&amp;* _OFF_."

"Tell me. It's all right."

"He's… out of state." It was vague but it was all he knew, and the information would be no more valuable to this man than it was to Bucky.

"Ah, the complications of insolvency," the red-haired man sighed and turned away from their stroll, leaning on the edge of the second-level railing to observe the mall below. Too involved to just walk away, Bucky stood awkwardly beside him, right hand still in his pocket, partially leaning on the railing.

"What the hell's that mean_?_" Bucky asked.

"You can't afford to follow him, so you came to the center of American consumerism. Well, James, there's an easy way of drawing the captain's attention back here. I can help you."

"Why?"

"Shouldn't you be asking 'how'? I thought soldiers took orders."

"_Why_."

"It suits me. It's a bargain we made quite some time ago."

"I don't remember—"

"Well, you wouldn't. Part of the bargain is that you _could_ remember, at some point. Now, shoot me."

The order had come in a normal tone, no modulation, no quiet urge of will behind the statement, and Bucky took a step back, straightening.

"What? No."

The red-haired man looked at him out of the corner of his eye, gaze almost hidden beneath thick eyebrows and hair. He was Austrian, Bucky guessed now, and tried to pull any other visual cues. He'd never met this man, yet the man knew who he was and had known enough to have mall cops looking out for him.

"Shoot me, James."

"I said no." He was getting louder but the red-haired man only got quieter and quieter, the words stronger.

"Don't turn. One way or another, you are going to shoot me, very publically, right here."

"What the hell - I'm not shooting anyone!"

People were stopping. People were staring at them across the mall's center gap.

"_Stay here, James._"

He could feel the man trying to urge him to stay in place through simple tone of voice. He had almost reached for his gun when the man said 'shoot me, James,' that was how strong it was… but it wasn't like the machine. It wasn't like anything his masters before had done. It was simpler. It was coercion. Years of having his memory forcibly wiped and diligently reclaimed had made anything not placed there by machine stick out like a thorn in a paw. Coercion was too simple, intended for people who only knew part of themselves. When he was paying attention, Bucky knew every inch of what was actually him and what he decided to do. Namely because it took so long to decide.

The man would have done better with arguing him into staying. He had to stay – not just because the man told him to; he wanted to stay, because this was perplexing and this something new that needed detangling – but he didn't have to shoot the man. Not just because he said so.

"I know what you're doing," he said. The words felt like venturing out onto a sheet of ice. Don't laugh, you'll sound hysterical. "I know what you're doing and it _won't_ _work_." Nope, laughing. Giddy. "It won't work! What the hell are you?"

"Do you know who I am, James?"

"No. No, but I'm not going to shoot you."

The man didn't straighten from where he was leaning against the siding, looking out at the people who were staring, too afraid to approach and slowly deciding all of this was someone else's problem and nobody seemed to be getting shot.

"You are. It's the only way to truly get your memories back. I told you that once. Consider this a reminder."

Memories? This was new and alarming. Bucky straightened, made sure the hand was still in the pocket.

"I know what was done to you and I can undo it," the man said smoothly. "But first, you need to reconnect with Steve Rogers."

"$%^&amp; you. I'm not shooting you and I'm not leading Steve to you."

"_Stay here_. Now. Hydra's remnants already know exactly where you are and that you will do what is required. We implanted trigger words in your head for just this kind of moment. "

"Shut up." He had to stay, that was true. But he didn't have to do what he was told. Trigger words. Good God, he hadn't even thought of them but they existed, didn't they. This man knew about them. And look at what he had been programmed to do; what would he do with things they had implanted in him? Screw these orders and this man, he was leaving. Bucky stepped quickly around the man, only to hear him say:

"_The fight isn't in you_, James. Shoot me."

Everything blurred for a second and the gun was in his hand, the shot still ringing in the acoustically-sensitive mall. People were screaming. The man was on the ground, unmoving.

Had he…?

Oh God.

The Winter Soldier couldn't move for a second, then he holstered the weapon more of habit than decision. That wasn't a Winter Soldier killing, his mind screamed, that was you. You let him tell you to _shoot_ him, what did you do; there are people here. _What the hell kind of ghost are you?!_

Exit strategy. He lunged over the edge of the railing and landed neatly on some sort of sculptured feature, directly below. Get out of here. Get out. The mall cops didn't have guns but they were running towards him with tasers and frantically calling backup. People were still screaming and, ducking strollers and burly, well-intentioned heroes/mall shoppers, he got out of the mall.

Outside, there was the blur of angry police sirens approaching from the street.

Melt into the background, what is the background; it was still cold out here but the arm was warm again.

Stop. You're not in Winter Soldier gear. They're looking for a man in a hat and a coat and at least one glove. He kept walking, ditching glove and hat and coat, then shoved the metal hand into the pocket of his pants. It wasn't made for that, but the pants hadn't been made for half of the things he'd done in them.

_Holy hell, you just killed someone again and you're walking away. What would the man on the bridge think? He'd think this is you, this is you; this was always you._

The police passed him by in the scree of panicked people. He kept walking north until he hit the City's midtown area and could see Stark Tower pitched up against the sky. Time to turn around and head south again, until he hit the water. Neither trip took very long, or helped him figure out what to do next. Walking just made the limp worse and the arm began whirring and whining with the exertion. He had been too long on the ground, so he scaled one of the apartment buildings and found it occupied, so he climbed down again. This area had more homeless people and fewer secure areas, though it was well-lit by the splendor that was Stark Tower.

That was really how he thought of it. Splendor. Manhattan was disturbingly complex, but Stark Tower always glowed. The Statue of Liberty hadn't changed in any way he could notice. Everything up here was a sight because he didn't have the pressure of seeing it through the lenses of a mission, or with an eye on the time.

Televisions blared in the window of one of the stores and Bucky paused to look up at it. It was a report on the bird man – the Falcon, Sam Wilson – advertising him as the most eligible bachelor in Harlem. Harlem. Harlem was… not terribly far from here.

###

...yup. Did a lot of Google Mapping to figure that one out, having never been to NYC and having only a middling knowledge of Marvel placement/geography. Annnd sorry bout the Faustus.


	3. Chapter 3

#

It had been the kind of day where ending it was the best part.

Counseling veterans didn't come with hours attached, so Sam had spent the last three (11pm to 2am, if anyone was counting) talking to a twenty-two year old who had just come back and found out the girl he had been 'getting serious about' when he left got pregnant. It wasn't his. And he was on a mile-long waiting list for another VA appointment about his tinnitus and the doctor's assistant was a [expletive expletive] ho-bag. And his father had been diagnosed with cancer while he was deployed and what the [expletive] are you supposed to do about that, man?

Sam had talked him out of binge-drinking the pain away (or at least, as close as Sam could come to being sure of that), got some food in him, and listened. Promised to make calls in the morning, made sure the soldier was stable enough to get to his door, and sent a follow-up text as he was walking away, reminding the soldier of what was going to happen now.

Thank God Steve was on a month-long break from the Find Bucky Road Trip. It was disorienting for soldiers to switch counselors, even when Parham, the new alternate counselor, was qualified and did the best he could. Trust didn't jump from person to person like that.

Shifting the bag of McDs to one hand, (yes, it was terrible, but he would run in the morning) Sam went to unlock the sliding door of his house. Wait. Nope.

Setting down the paper bag, he took the steel baseball bat from the garden and went around to the window. The window was a calculated security risk – it led into a storage room and could be jiggled open. The door to the storage room was locked from the inside. Sam jiggled open the window, climbed in, and unlocked the door with the key. He opened it slowly, checking for flashlights in the house.

None yet, but something was off.

He moved quickly towards the kitchen, where he had seen the shadow. At an angle, based on the light from the outside, there was a boot on the floor. Shifting, he quietly set down the bat, grabbed the gun from behind the toaster, and pointed it at the intruder. The man didn't move. Rising to a standing position, he took partial cover behind the wall.

"I'm not running a hotel."

"Sam." The man said the name reflectively, trying it out. The voice wasn't familiar.

"If we have an appointment, I don't remember," Sam replied.

Silence again, so Sam moved into range of the light switch and flipped it on. The fluorescent gleam should have made the intruder flinch, recoil, something, but he just sat there, hands on the table. Hand—on the table. The other thing was tarnished metal and shone in the unnatural lighting. Sam kept the gun up, moving around the far side of the kitchen. He had to move carefully around this guy.

"Hey."

The intruder didn't respond the first two times he said it. The third time, he tacked on: "Hey. Soldier."

Steve's friend looked up. He looked lost, mask-free, eyeliner-free, with healing bruises and unkempt hair.

"You a vet?" Sam asked. An expression of cringing, deep loss came into the man's eyes and he ducked his head. After a minute, he nodded.

"Okay. Hey. Hey."

After another minute, the intruder looked up again, making uncomfortable eye contact because it was, he was learning, the only way Sam was going to have a conversation with him.

"That's good," Sam said. "Cause I help vets."

The intruder broke eye contact and looked away into Sam's hallway and living room as if either of them were going to help him with this conversation.

"But there's a problem," Sam said. Eye contact flickered back again, wary. "You are also homicidal and tried to kill one of my good friends. Are we gonna have a problem?"

The intruder didn't break eye contact, not exactly, but he stared down at the kitchen table in kind of a numb horror. Saying 'hey' a couple of times didn't bring him back, so Sam let him sit and began making eggs until the guy pulled himself together enough to answer. Sometimes people did better when they didn't feel you were waiting on them. Still, his back was never fully on the man and he had confidence in his draw on the gun.

Nah, he reflected unhappily, that wasn't it. If the Winter Soldier wanted him dead, he would probably be dead. Steve wouldn't get here fast enough, even if Sam called him right now. The police here wouldn't show up for a good thirty minutes after he placed a call. In Harlem, as a superhero, you knew. Right. It was 2am and he was a superhero.

A sound like a toaster falling off the top of the fridge stirred him from his thoughts. He turned around to see the intruder stabilizing himself with his other hand. Where the metal arm had been, there was just a gaping circle fused to his left shoulder. The prosthetic itself lay on the floor like a dead thing. The intruder looked tired and deeply worried, glancing at the floor and then, seeing Sam looking at him looking at the floor, gave up and reached over to cover the circle where the arm had been.

"Okay," Sam said. "So no killings right now. If that dented my floor though, you're paying for it."

The intruder blinked, reached into his pants pocket (Sam gripped the handle of the frying pan, thought about the placement of the gun), and pulled out a wallet (all tension relaxed).

"How did you find my house?" Sam asked, going back to the eggs.

"Phone book," the intruder/Steve's friend/the currently-not-homicidal-master-assassin said.

"My name is _Sam Wilson_, how did you—"

There was something of a person in the reply, a bit more intonation than Sam had seen coming.

"'Most eligible bachelor in Harlem.'"

Ah. Right. That interview. More accurately, that journalist _conducting_ the interview; he would have given her his number, home address… hell, she could come over anytime. Instead, he got Bucky.

"You come looking for Steve?"

A nod.

"Well, we don't live together, man."

"Should. He needs someone, he'll get into… fights…" Bucky stared numbly at the table again for a moment, shut his eyes in concentration for another longer moment, and then said quietly: "I got into a fight. At the mall in… in Manhattan."

"You were there?" Expletives ran across Sam's mind, though he had trained many of them out by now; expletives were too good at setting off the people he worked with. Bucky was nodding, not making eye contact but more conversational than he had been in the past fifteen minutes, addressing the cabinets with a fixed attention.

"I was talking with a man and he was talking about trigger words and then I shot him."

"_You shot him_?" Sam asked, tone level as a carpenter's tool. Bucky shook his head like a kid trying to get out of a punishment.

"But I don't remember doing it." He looked up directly into Sam's eyes and said clearly: "I remember all of them and I don't remember shooting him."

Blink and the eye contact broke again, unsure and twitchy.

"All right. I believe you," Sam said and put a plate on the table in front of the man. "There's food if you want it. You don't have to eat it if you don't want to. What I'm going to do is have you come with me to the living room and leave the arm here. We gonna have a problem with that?"

Bucky shook his head and shifted oddly – trying to pick up the plate with the arm that wasn't there, Sam realized. Bucky quickly compensated, switching to the other hand and using the momentum to stand, carefully stepping over the prosthetic.

Sam sat him down on the couch and found a specialty music station that played Glenn Miller, jazz, swing. Stuff that might be somewhat close to what Bucky knew and Steve always seemed to prefer. Blankets were visible on top of an ottoman in the corner, but Sam took a few over to the couch anyway and let Bucky see him doing it.

"Two rules. You don't leave the house without telling me. You don't enter any of the houses in the area if you do leave. If you can't keep one, keep the other."

Bucky nodded, making his way through the mess of eggs, cheese, and everything else Sam had thrown in. He was practically ambidextrous anyway, being a master assassin, and if the imbalance of his arm threw him off, he didn't telegraph it much.

Sam went into the kitchen and sighed. The station was crooning 'Moon River' and he would have killed to listen to some Marvin Gaye right now. He called Steve and the man picked up after one ring.

"You win, Sam, it's too early to go jogging."

"This is the only time I can beat you, come on."

"What's going on?"

Sigh. "I got your friend on my couch."

The other end of the line got very quiet for a moment.

"Got back from a session, he was waiting for me. Looking for you, looks like hell, but he took off the arm so I'm guessing he's willing to talk."

"That's—great. Sam."

"Steve, he says he killed that guy in the Manhattan mall today. I can't go to sleep with him in the house, can't kick him out."

"I'm on my way. Did you call Tony?"

"Tony doesn't know this guy."

"Good, don't."

When Sam came out, Bucky was asleep, buried under all the blankets (not just the ones Sam had moved, the entire contents of the ottoman were spread over him). Keeping an eye on him, Sam grabbed one of the blankets and went to the base of the stairs. Thank God they were carpeted or this would have been really uncomfortable. Keeping phone and gun in arms' reach, he sat down, texting Steve to say the sliding glass door was unlocked. There weren't a lot of dangerous people who hadn't already gotten in anyway.

39 minutes passed before the great shadow of the super soldier filled the kitchen doorway. Sam flashed his cell phone in welcome and the big man came over, very quietly. They communicated via passing the phone back and forth. Steve had seen the prosthetic on the floor, was worried if it would do something to Bucky health-wise; Sam confirmed that Steve was going to be able to stay up the whole time – and then went to sleep.

You could worry about people; you could do things in the dead of night and run yourself ragged, but sometimes you had to sleep.

#

This is my favorite chapter and oh my God I'm sorry I love Sam now lots. Thank you to everyone who is reading, commenting, and following. I really appreciate it and hope this entertains.


	4. Chapter 4

gah, merging Buckys is damn near impossible. Working on it!

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#

Sam woke up because someone had kicked him hard in the hip and when you woke up like that, it was a good idea to get away fast. He somersaulted, which got him halfway to the other side of the living room, and gave him time to check the hip damage during the roll. Not bad enough to incapacitate but it hurt.

The Winter Soldier stood panting in the center of the room, a smoking gun with a suppressor in one hand – only until Steve hit him at the torso, carrying him backwards. Without the arm, the Winter Soldier weighed much less, landing with a grunt. Steve pinned him easily.

"Sam, you okay?" he asked, without looking up.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm cool. What the hell though?"

"One of the blankets fell off and took some books off the end table. He woke up in a hurry and I don't think he's— hey Buck," Steve said to the snarling Winter Soldier. "Everything's okay."

The Winter Soldier struggled, pushing upwards, but there wasn't much he could do with Steve sitting on him. At least some of that muscle was weight and there was a lot of muscle. Steve was still watching the man, brow knitted in concentration. The Winter Soldier twisted with surprising speed, managing to get Steve off him and a knife out of a pocket of the coat. Both were standing now, tensed for a fight.

"Steve—" Sam said warningly.

"Bucky, there's no need to do this. You know me, you came to Sam's house—"

Any further dialogue stopped as the Winter Soldier rushed the super soldier. Steve side-stepped, grabbed at the arm, missed it and almost fell as the Winter Soldier dropped to sweep his leg around. Instead, Steve managed to jump the sweep and grab the arm. He squeezed until the knife dropped. Then he pinned the Winter Soldier again.

"_Stop_,_" _Steve said, the order almost a bark.

"Soldier," Sam said, approaching just close enough to move the knife out of reach. The Winter Soldier looked at him, then back at Steve, intent. "Hey. Hey," Sam repeated.

Eye contact established.

"Sit-rep," Sam said firmly.

"Completing the mission."

"What mission?"

Eye contact broke, wavered a little. All intonation died: "Kill Rogers. Issue date: 04.04.2014."

"Abort mission. Directives changed," Sam said immediately. "Do not complete mission."

"Confirmation number."

Sam glanced at Steve, who just shrugged. He didn't know any confirmation number, but the Winter Soldier was _responding_. Sam didn't want to tap out here for the sake of a forgotten number. From where he was sitting, he could see numbers inscribed on inside of the circular arm slot, like a product code.

"#6002010 dash 110," he read, hoping and praying it was the right one.

"Confirmed. Mission aborted." The Winter Soldier stopped struggling. There was a long moment of stillness from all of them. Steve looked down at his friend and then over at Sam. Mouthed "…thank you" with an expression that left no doubt he had been lost in the situation. It was the second time he had tried to bring Bucky back after the helicarrier and Sam knew from subtle hints after their jogs that the incident still haunted Steve.

"Bucky?" Steve said. The Winter Soldier had closed his eyes but, at the name, they opened again. A strange moment passed where he appeared to be deciding how to react, scanning through emotions as if unable to choose just one to present but knowing something had to be said.

"…Steve," he said finally.

The name carried life; it carried the spirit and personality of someone behind it. Someone with confidence and strength, someone who sounded like he had never been anyone's puppet. The super soldier stared down at his friend as if he had lost all trace of time and weight and the fact he was still pinning the other man to the ground like a threat. Sam stared because the two personalities just didn't correlate.

The man speaking wasn't the man who had spoken to him the night before. That didn't make sense.

"It's me," Steve said.

The man seemed to take heart in that, though he still laid there like an automaton.

"Just couldn't find something to do after the war, Steve?"

—an automaton trying to joke.

"Saving you," Steve replied automatically, trying to be funny, trying to be _normal_. The confident persona staggered and retreated. That haunted look came back into the other man's eyes. The rasp that followed sounded more like the man Sam had spoken to the night before.

"There isn't anything left to save."

"_There is_. You're here. I'm here, Sam's here."

Eye contact, briefly, flicking to Sam then towards the kitchen where the prosthetic still lay, then back to Steve. It was a moment where it felt like the man would smile, if he still knew how, but there weren't enough pieces left for the jigsaw to emerge.

"Tell us about yesterday," Sam said, because this could spiral downwards quickly. Steve was gearing up to say something and men couldn't be won back to living through a couple of inspirational words, even if Steve was the one saying them. It worked in wartime; in peacetime, people just had to figure out how to live.

"Yesterday?" Bucky said. "I don't…"

"The mall in Manhattan. Someone died and you were there."

Bucky twisted free of Steve's grip (the man let him, Sam was sure) and sat very still, thoughts whirring behind the numb stare. Steve glanced over at Sam again, apologetic, but not moving from Bucky's side. This was going to be a problem, Sam could tell, but they had always known that.

"He was talking about trigger words," Bucky said. "And then I shot him."

"Did he say something? One of the triggers?" Sam asked.

"You think I know?" Bucky said, a snarl brewing in it. "Everything since falling off a train looks like a %^&amp;*ing radio going in and out to me. I don't even remember shooting him."

"He's asking a question, Buck."

Bucky looked over at the super soldier and the look held layers of complexity. _Why aren't you on my side? Am I wrong? What the hell am I –_ Weariness kicked in and Sam could see the man's inclination to participate slipping further and further away. This was difficult and, more than that, it was embarrassing. Memories should be easy to find and, when murders were the one thing that came easily, it was terrifying to have one you couldn't remember. It called everything into question.

"Security footage would show it better," Sam said, more to Steve than the man Steve was still restraining.

"Yeah, Tony'll have that by now," Steve agreed, then glanced towards the kitchen. "We'll need him to get the arm reattached too. You up for a field trip, Bucky?"

"Been following you years, why would I stop now," the man said gamely but, as Steve got up, Bucky didn't; moving to stand had incited a coughing fit. One that… wasn't ending. Sam was far enough away he didn't have to worry about the Winter Soldier attacking again, but it wasn't even an option.

"Maybe driving would be easier," Steve said. Bucky shook his head, the coughing too severe for him to speak for another few seconds.

"Planning on leaving a lung on my carpet?" Sam asked, more concerned than joking. Another minute of this and he would try to give the man water, never mind that Bucky had tried to kill him a minute ago. The man tried to speak through the cough, holding together the last shreds of the confident persona.

"The iron man—would love—that. Lungs're… mine—" Speech died in his throat, becoming just coughing, single hand braced on the floor.

"Stark could send a car," Steve said as Sam stood to get water.

"…Barton," Bucky managed.

"Barton? What's Barton got to do with—"

"Why you gotta ruin a man's stealth ego?" Clint said from the doorway. Both Sam and Steve looked up—Bucky's coughing had obscured all sound of the archer's entry. "Don't bother calling, car's coming around the corner."

"He knew?" Sam asked, more out of irritation than inquiry. He had been in here with the ghost of the intelligence community all night and Stark had done _nothing_?

"Stark would've sent thirty suits and a tank to pick him up. I knew and Nat knew. We're good." Clint glanced at the dissembling man on the floor, then at Sam and Steve. "But I'm guessing he's not?"

Bucky had stopped coughing but he had also stopped moving. Steve touched him on the shoulder and the Winter Soldier didn't respond. Said his name—then repeated it several times. No response.

Clint stood in the doorway and watched, the blonde man's expression getting nearer and nearer to concern. Sam knew what it was like to spend the night doing surveillance and it showed in the shadows under Clint's eyes. Everyone had had a long night.

"Steve, you can get him to the car?" Sam asked.

"He's not—he'll be—Buck, you want to get up?" Steve began the sentence to Sam then broke it off and directly addressed his friend.

Sam could see the signs like a readout: eye contact was gone, body language was confined; in short, Bucky didn't feel any more secure here than he would have in a Hydra facility on the wrong end of a needle. It might have happened when Clint walked in; it might have been the coughing fit. Somewhere, the confident façade had taken too much of a beating to continue and what Bucky was—what he _really_ was now—shone through. Watching Steve figure it out was like watching a Labrador try to find its way up a too-high flight of stairs, searching this way and that for an opening but finding walls at every corner.

"We should go, Buck. Stark will be able to get the arm back on and… we can figure things out from there."

When Steve said his name, the Winter Soldier pushed himself smoothly to his feet, slipped past Clint and went into the kitchen. Metal grated on the floor as he picked up the arm. It was a mission and he could handle missions, Sam felt. Steve followed his friend, the super soldier's size big and yet powerless. No eye contact here.

"He'll help with the trigger words. I'm not going to give up."

Bucky's vacant stare flickered for a moment, shifting to the fridge instead of the cabinets, but no less intent. He gripped the arm tighter, then, as if he came to an agreement with himself, the intensity slipped away.

"…yeah."

#

Thank you to anyone who has made it this far with me.


	5. Chapter 5

Thank you for the reviews, Qweb and Savvycali! And to everyone who has favorited or followed this little drabble. And holy crap, I didn't realize this chapter got as long as it did until FF tallied the word count. Hi, 2600 word count, been a while...

#

Bucky knew that Steve had been relieved when he said 'yeah,' instead of the silence Bucky wanted to maintain. Steve's relief was why he had said it.

However, it relieved no one that he tried to assume a prisoner of war position after he sat in the car. Even unconsciously, he was worrying people. Every mission he had been expected to ride with his hands behind his head, safe and incapable of killing his handlers. He was pretty sure he had done something to deserve the reputation, but he didn't remember. Every murder was clear in his mind, yes, but the contexts weren't.

Anyway, he was one-handed right now so the position didn't work anyway. Improvisation was difficult, but he put the arm across his lap, held onto it with the other hand, and tried not to look threatening. Steve was walking a line by bringing him in; he could feel it in the rest of the van. The fear, tension, more powerful than actually holding a gun, and the feeling that most of them were glad his arm was off.

Bucky, by contrast, tried not to shiver. Sam had stayed behind and he missed the man's calming presence. Steve was his friend but Sam was… Sam was calming. Sam didn't give the impression that everything could break loose at any moment, while Steve gave the impression that if it _did_, Bucky would be safe. It wasn't the same.

Getting into Stark Tower in Barton's van was much easier than entering through the front door. Steve did insist on carrying the arm, for security's sake, and Barton patted him down for weapons before they let him out. Two more knives, a gun, and three daggers. He voluntarily gave up the sedation capsule and the poison capsule.

"Stark will probably want to do a scan the minute we get in anyway," Steve said. Bucky nodded. Stark probably would.

"Are you okay with this?" Steve asked. Bucky looked over at the man—the earnest, inquisitive face over the mass of leadership and muscle. Steve was in plainclothes but he never really put away the uniform of the Captain. He wanted confirmation. Bucky didn't want to tell him that he just wanted orders, at this point, not questions on how he _felt_ about _things. _Everything he felt was probably wrong anyway.

Instead, he nodded.

JARVIS deemed his arm safe, as long as it was detached, so they took the long elevator ride up to Stark's lobby.

"He's a bit…" Steve began. "He's a bit of an ass."

"We've met," Bucky said.

"And he's probably going to try and get you to… well, I don't want to hypothesize, but—"

He had to ask.

"What should I do?"

Steve looked up, startled out of his thoughts. A quell of fear went through Bucky's stomach. Asking for direction was something Bucky—Steve's version of Bucky—shouldn't have asked and he had just asked it. Requested orders.

"Don't agree to join SHIELD," Steve said after a moment. "And don't join the Avengers if he asks. Not now, anyway."

"Is that all?"

"Well, I don't know what you… want…" the super soldier hedged. Bucky bit back the words 'that makes two of us,' and tried to think of anything he needed to ask Steve, the one person he could trust in all of this. Stark certainly wasn't going to explain things for him but he needed Stark to get the arm reattached. He couldn't run from here.

The elevator door opened and they stepped out into the lobby – or maybe it was Stark's living room. Hard to tell with all the windows and couches and the full bar waiting against the wall, but Bucky was guessing 'receiving area.' The iron man not-currently-in-iron was standing in front of a laptop with at least a dozen clear screens flickering in front of him. The windows had been dimmed to the perfect lighting for this task – Bucky had no idea how. Instead, JARVIS politely introduced them from invisible speakers somewhere overhead.

"Captain America, Hawkeye, and James Barnes to see you, sir."

"His arm's broken, isn't it," Stark said without turning. Steve glanced at Bucky, then back at the obnoxious prick.

"That matter?"

"Well, seeing as he gave me the brush-off last time we met and that thing's running on some rip-off ARC reactor which is bound to go kaput without a charge, I'm guessing it's the only reason you're back." He turned around. "Oh, look. I'm right."

"The arm is fully operational," JARVIS intoned.

"Oh. Well then." Stark took a measured step back. It wasn't fear though; assessment, pinpointing weapons in the room, monitoring Bucky's stance.

"I took it off," Bucky said with some pleasure. Pleasure. That was odd. Still, the situation felt more controlled here; with Steve at his side, Stark wasn't as terrifying as he had been before. As long as he could keep some thread of respect tied between him and Stark, Bucky could control this.

"And you can't get it back on," Stark said. Steve took umbrage at this and Bucky looked over at him, puzzled. He hadn't read anything in Stark's tone, but Steve had and changed the subject, abruptly, to something Bucky had little memory of.

"Did you learn anything about the man in the mall?" Steve asked.

"Funny you should ask, because that ties into the man with the metal arm. The man in the mall was Dr. Johann Fennhoff, otherwise known as Dr. Faustus. Austrian, psychiatrist with a private office in Chesapeake Bay, and despite looking like this—" A picture came up on one of the screens, featuring the red-bearded large man from the mall. "He can speak and get just about anyone to do what he says. Part-magician, part-psychoterrorist, which is a hell of a term for something I just made up."

"Who did he work for?" Steve asked, looking at the image.

"'Did' isn't the right word. His body vanished from the morgue. NYPD searched his apartment and, under SHIELD instructions, gave his files to me for review. I'm Hill's top guy right now. JARVIS?"

"Sir?"

"Remind me to tell Hill I'm her top guy."

"Yes, sir."

"Anyway, I found lists. Faustus has been collaborating with Computer-Zola for years and they did not get along. Still, Faustus programmed some newer data into…" And here even Stark got quiet. It hung over the room, Stark's silence, because it didn't seem like something that happened often. This was not a man who often felt the pressure of awkward, or let it sit like this.

"Bucky," Steve said, very quietly. "But if he worked on it, why would he say a trigger that would get him killed?"

"No idea. It's possible he didn't think it would work. It was a subset of another order because…" Stark checked the sheet. "They wanted him to be able to kill Steve on sight, that was basic training mission-type stuff, but Faustus wanted this particular order to be that the Winter Soldier would shoot any messenger who delivered the trigger word, managed all the programming on that himself."

The training missions rang all kinds of bells. When he knew the context, Bucky could go back into his mind and find some of the memories relating to it. He remembered the training missions. Completing the training missions and executing the targets. Targets which invariably looked like… Steve. Sudden nausea turned his stomach. He would complete a training mission and then he would kill someone who looked like Steve. He had killed people who looked exactly like Steve dozens of times, training himself to kill Steve –

And yet in the helicarrier he hadn't.

Actual Steve was the only person who deserved to live then? What about all the men doing as they were ordered, playing 'Steve'? _What kind of screwed morality lets you kill dozens and not kill one?_

"I didn't…" he murmured, trying to keep as quiet as possible. "I didn't know, I didn't, I… didn't…"

Stark hadn't noticed, but Steve was glancing at him with concern as Stark went on.

"On the lists I found, the messenger trigger had 12 red stars next to it. I'm assuming they tested it 12 times. But stuff like this one—it has 48—has been more thoroughly tested."

"Which one—"

Stark said 'the centerpiece can be recycled' and everything… blacked. It was muscle-memory from the second he went into motion, metal in hand. Flipping switches, cables, locks—fifteen seconds later Bucky found himself with the arm reattached, pointing a gun at Stark and _he didn't even know where the gun had come from. _

"Buck—" Steve put his hand on top of the metal arm and pushed it down, gently. Bucky let the gun come down. His hand shook. He visually followed the path of his arm to the ground, staring at the tile below them until it came into focus, something to stare at past the arm. The arm was reattached and he had no memory of how he had even learned to do it, much less the process he had followed in the last 15 seconds to attach it.

"Problem solved?" Stark asked—quietly. Everything was gentle right now, everything touched with delicacy like a piece of lace dragged over a rooftop that should tear it to bits. Using his other hand, Bucky touched the arm. It fit seamlessly at the shoulder, no buckles or cords hanging off. He know how to do it and do it well.

"The entire list is triggers. Banner translated most of it before he went incommunicado, so I knew what that one would do."

And he hadn't felt like saying? Stark had made him an experiment, conducted an experiment, in front of Cap, Barton, and whatever else was surveying him here, and hadn't felt like telling him. It was against his will. It didn't matter if it was something that needed doing, something he wanted done anyway; he hadn't wanted to attach his own arm, not like that.

"Get them out," Bucky said, looking up.

Really, that wasn't what he wanted to say. He had an elite set of skills and right now he wanted to practice all of them on Stark's smug, intelligent face. Not so smug now though—Stark looked surprised. Surprise was bad; it meant that the man would be asking for clarification in a minute, trying to tell him that he had been weaponized and taking trigger words out of his brain wasn't going to be as simple as defusing a bomb.

Preemptively, he felt himself shutting down. Parts of his mind that had been active deciding that now was a good time for a holiday and turning out the lights of memory as they went.

"Get them out," he repeated, because it was the most recent thing he had said, it was important, and they weren't arguing with it.

"We need the guy you killed to get them out," Stark said, gesturing at the red-haired psychiatrist's picture. "I'm not just going to start mucking about in there."

A mission. It was a mission then.

"Briefing." The word used for requesting more intel. They would hand him a packet from time to time, because he wasn't a child; they could trust him to follow the mission plan. That was a briefing. The iron man hadn't prepared a briefing.

"Under Maria Hill's orders, you can't leave this building until SHIELD clears you," Stark said, collapsing all the screens into one laptop with a wave of the hand.

"He can't get SHIELD clearance until we get this guy," Steve interjected.

"I have a meeting with Hill in five minutes, I'm getting clearance. Get him set up somewhere secure and don't let him watch the news. JARVIS knows better too." He handed off the list to Steve and, thank God, said nothing else that Bucky could hear.

He hadn't watched the news in years anyway, not unless he was undercover and didn't have a choice. But if he couldn't watch the news, he was probably _on_ the news. The man at the mall was probably on the news.

"The name," he said quietly, glancing up from the floor, but Steve had gotten pulled into conversation with Stark. Barton was looking at him, but said: "Dr. Faustus" with a guarded air. Dr. Faustus. Armin Zola. Trace it, think back through it, ignore everything around the memories, just find Dr. Faustus. Figure out who he might be, where he might be. Blank walls. Blank memories everywhere he looked

He could do better.

"Bucky."

It sounded like the name had been said several times and someone was getting impatient. He came to himself when he felt Steve grip his human shoulder. He glanced up.

"Stark's sending a nurse and he wants to do a full eval later. Do you think you can handle a nurse?"

Agree. That's what he was supposed to do in this situation. What Steve wanted. Instead, he shrugged with one shoulder, which dislodged Steve's hand. He wanted to ask about the man from the mall again. The red-haired man from the mall. The… the doctor? The red-haired doctor from the mall that he had…

Steve had the list in one hand. It was crumpled up in his fist, right now, but he had the list in hand.

"Don't."

He didn't want to look at the super soldier. His friend. Super soldier. Man on the—damn it, he needed more sleep.

"It's so I don't say them," Steve said, quietly. "It's a copy."

Copy. There were more of the lists. How many people knew the words? Had memorized the words? How many of his former handlers were running around with this knowledge in their heads, people just waiting for him to try and address his dozens of assassinations so they could set him up for another one?

"Don't," he repeated.

"Stark's an ass," Steve said, reaffirming what he had said earlier. "Come on, we'll talk about someone else… you remember Namor?"

No. He didn't. He wished he did though, so he nodded and watched the floor as Steve started talking about an Atlantean prince from the war. The sound of Steve talking quickly became white noise; still strange to hear English as a predominate language.

Their shoes were different. Steve wasn't in uniform, so the sneakers he wore were running shoes. White (or they had once been white before saving-the-day got at them) and with sad-looking laces. In contrast, Bucky's boots were scuffed, marked with water damage, mud, and several tears in the fabric from the tower. He had meant to switch them out, but it was harder to obtain new shoes than it was to get hat, shirt, pants, and coat. People were weird about shoes and underwear and socks. There were some things you were only supposed to buy if you had a home to take them back to.

Steve hugged him by the shoulder. In the pressure of his fingertips was a life of courage and confidence. Even if he hadn't always done the best thing, Steve did the Right Thing. Steve would lay down his life for the American people and as far as he was concerned, Bucky still was one of them.

"It's gonna be okay," Steve told him.

No, it wasn't. Not until they finished the mission, got the trigger words out of his head, not until they dealt with this enormous problem he was making for Steve just by existing, just by refusing to die when he should have.

He nodded anyway.

#

I feel like I should apologize for the meandering of this story (it's one of my rare didn't-plot-this-out-fully-in-advance ones and I don't have beta) but, as is, I'm just grateful for reviews and anyone who wants to read it. Thank you.


	6. Chapter 6

Full disclosure: I read imaginebucky prompts on tumblr. I am not trying to steal or emulate/imitate anything written there, but stuff that I read gets in my head. The tumblr is not affecting the plot, motivations, or interactions of the characters, but I know that there may be some ideas between here and there and wanted to acknowledge. : )

#

Steve kept talking about Namor as JARVIS directed them down to living quarters, which perplexed Bucky beyond anything else. A tower should not accommodate residential living. He didn't have much time to think about it because Steve kept talking.

Namor – otherwise known as the Sub-Mariner and a prince of Atlantis, and an arrogant jerk while he was a good man to have at your back. But that wasn't the only person Bucky had forgotten – there was The Human Torch, Steve said – a man they had worked with several times who could ignite himself without burning to death or experiencing pain. Steve named them, others, the entire group of the Howling Commandos and Bucky recalled a handful. That was… sort of good. At least he hadn't killed them.

He lost track of where they were going, trying to keep up with Steve's dialogue, and only stopped when JARVIS directed them to a closed door.

"These will be your quarters, Mr. Barnes, for the period of your stay at Stark Tower. You will have noticed you passed through several fortified doors, but I have been instructed to remind you of it. These doors will be locked."

_That_ took no explanation. "So I can't leave."

"For the time being." The door ahead of them clicked as a bolt slid out of place. "Enter."

Steve glanced at him, then pushed the door open and they stepped into the largest bedroom Bucky had ever been assigned. It wasn't the largest he had ever _seen_—several missions had required that he enter bigger, more lavish bedrooms, but it was the biggest he had ever had to himself. The bed was in the main room and it took only a glance to know he wouldn't be sleeping in it tonight. Or ever.

"Clothes have been ordered and should be waiting by the time you finish showering," JARVIS said.

And there was a shower, bigger than the ones he had been slipping in and out of the YMCA to use and this one was private. Steve made a concerned noise as Bucky stood in the bathroom doorway, looking in.

He didn't look back at Steve. Looking was going to mean that he understood why the noise was made, when the questions were already running around his head. _Can you take a shower, what if you slip and fall, what if you forget where you are and demolish the glass door, what if you forget about JARVIS and try to beat the speaker to death with the showerhead?_

Instead he channeled Steve's Bucky and said the most arrogant thing he could think of: "I'm a master assassin, I think I can shower without…"

—what was it called when people fell like that? He knew what it looked like, like round-housing the sky, like kicking at a football and missing–

"…banana-peeling on the floor."

"Banana-peeling?"

"Go away. The sky-voice told me to take a shower." It wasn't hard to channel Steve's Bucky, but it was tiring and hard to know how much was too much. He must not have overstepped his bounds, because Steve held up his hands in surrender and backed out.

"If you need anything, yell for JARVIS."

"I won't."

"But yell—"

"Good_bye_ Steve."

Thank God, he left.

"Start the shower, J….ARVIS. JARVIS," Bucky said.

"You have to do that, sir," said the speaker, with a touch of smugness. This didn't seem right. Machines shouldn't be able to be smug, but Bucky let it go and, with a bit of figuring, managed to turn on the shower and adjust the temperature.

"Is the room bugged?"

"I monitor the room, sir. There are no other devices."

"And you report to Stark?" He sat down on the toilet seat to wait for the shower to heat up. The light overhead had switched over to heat-lamp the moment the shower came on and he was comfortable, even waiting for the shower.

"Stark insists that I report what you are 'up to,' however, he is not interested in 'sneezes and farts,' JARVIS said.

"Are you telling him you're talking to me?"

"Not at present, sir. He is meeting with Ms. Hill."

"Good." A part of the Winter Soldier pulled out in front then – he didn't have to be Steve's Bucky with this robot, he could start completing the mission. "What was Dr…"

No. The name. The name. The name was the mission. He sat in silence, trying to remember it.

"JARVIS."

"Sir."

"What was the name of the doctor we talked about in Stark's office?"

"Dr. Johann Fennhoff, otherwise known as Dr. Faustus."

"What's his last known address? It should be…" think. Think. "Ches.. Chesapeake."

"I'm sorry, sir."

Ah. So there were some provisions in place. Bucky let it go for the moment and got in the shower, grateful for… everything a shower was. Baths were like the tank. They _weren't,_ he knew that logically, but there was that similarity to being in cyro, surrounded by water slowly growing cold. Showers were hot and ever-changing; you didn't fall asleep in a shower. The arm was waterproof but he had known that so long it felt silly to consciously think it. Of course his arm was waterproof. The whole Winter Soldier project was a massive waste of time if he could be shorted out by a dunk in the ocean.

"I know he lived in New York," Bucky said, over the sound of the water. "Give me his movements before that."

JARVIS apparently had no instructions on that, so the speaker went into a rundown of the psychiatrist's movements for the past decade. Bucky could figure out, knowing the association with Zola, what some of the movements were regarding. Nothing stood out, no bolt holes that he could remember, so he tried to remember everything the man had said leading up to the… trigger. In the background, he could hear his arm starting to get mad at the heat of the shower and the steam, whirring viciously, cutting out, then whirring again. Let it. His lungs didn't mind the heat and the wet – this was the longest he had gone without coughing in weeks. Months?

No, focus, you were thinking about Faustus. Faustus.

"Sir?"

Bucky flinched to life at the inquiry. Someone pounded on the door, saying his name loudly, but the yelling person hadn't said his name. His skin felt wrinkled and dehydrated from the heat, his arm just a hissing, sad thing by his side. Steve was the one yelling.

"Copy…. JARVIS," he said.

"You have been standing in the shower for half an hour, sir, since you stopped responding."

"Bucky!" from outside the door.

"—And Mr. Rogers grew concerned."

"I'm fine, Cap."

He didn't say it loud enough—the man kept pounding. Easier to step out of the shower, go over to the door, and reassure the man than to yell. He moved to open the door and the arm let out a long, whistling whine, refusing to respond.

Fine. It had done this before; he opened the door with his other hand and stepped out. He quickly realized he only had the dirty clothes he had stepped in with. Putting them back on was pointless. There was the towel but— what would Steve's Bucky do?

"Steve, I need my damn clothes."

The pounding stopped. It had been a polite pounding. If Steve wanted IN, he would have just smashed the hell out of Stark's door and apologized later.

"You're okay?" Cap asked, voice muffled by the door.

"_Clothes_."

A pair of jeans and a cotton shirt were tossed in. Bucky had become used to jeans, a 1950s-era invention, but it was still weird to have them be the first thing anyone thought of for him to wear. Wasn't the point that he _wasn't_ going to run around doing heavy-duty things? Except for – ah, right. The ongoing hunt for… the man he had killed. Whatever his name was.

"JARVIS," he began, intending to ask the computer about the red-haired man's affiliations.

"Bucky."

He stopped in mid-stoop to pick up the shirt. "…what happened to 'sir'."

"My authorizations have been upgraded. Master Stark advised me that the best way to get your attention was to call you Bucky."

"Don't." He tried to pick up the shirt. His arm didn't move. "Stick to sir. Or soldier. Or…" He couldn't think of more words. "Not Bucky. Don't."

"Of course, sir."

Damn it, his arm wouldn't move. He concentrated on making his fingers move, realizing after a moment that he was sitting on the floor now, staring at his hand. Dead. The metal gleamed in the heat lamps of the bathroom, as much a part of him as a rock was part of a waterfall. Dead.

"Buck?" Steve said.

Get your damn pants on, soldier. Struggling, he managed to follow the internally-given order, even managing to button them. The shirt… _shirts, who needs shirts, I'm the Winter Soldier._

And a memory of Faustus emerged: _Really, Mr. Barnes, the only thing that has ever made you useful and worthwhile has been the winter soldier. The only time you were called upon and regarded as anything other than merely _human.

So he **had** met Faustus before.

"Buck, seriously, are you okay?" Steve asked from the other side of the door. Damn it. Get up. He got up, pushed open the door and, intending to stride past Steve, almost fell onto the super soldier instead. Steve gripped him by the shoulders and stabilized him easily. If he noticed the dead arm, he didn't show it.

"Didn't you get a shirt?"

So he hadn't noticed. Bucky glanced over at the wall.

"Arm's dead. Stark should charge it."

"You want to take it off?" Steve asked, carefully.

"No."

"I'll help you get a shirt on then and we can—"

"_No_."

The tone held more venom than either of them had expected and Bucky tried to backtrack.

"Don't want… don't want anyone dressing me." Eye contact was far too daunting a proposition, even if it was what Steve's Bucky would have done. "You get it?"

"I do. You in the mood for a meal, first?"

"No." Bucky stabilized himself against the doorway and shrugged, suppressing a cough. The change in air temperature was already doing a number on his lungs. "Just want to see the iron man."

Steve seemed frustrated. "You need to eat."

"And you need sleep. Don't see you slowing down."

"...come on. We'll find Stark."

###

No, seriously, this is going somewhere, eventually. Hopefully, the journey there is entertaining.

Reviews are appreciated, though I'll probably keep updating until we get where we're going, regardless.


	7. Chapter 7

I'M BACK. ish. Back-ish. Long weekend.

EvelynHunters, thank you for the review! Sorry there hasn't been more on Bucky and Nat. ...much to my irritation, he's too unstable right now to do much in the way of remembering but hopefully that will stabilize, sorry rambling ... late nightish.).

#

Stark was knee-and-elbow deep in what looked like the upside-down undercarriage of a tank but actually proved to be a massive suit of armor. Steve appeared to take this in stride, though he did skirt the twin garbage-can sized hands, supermanned in front of the torso. Deep turquoise fires glowed deep in them.

"Stark!" Steve called loudly. It echoed through the armor.

"Y'know, I thought I made it clear Avengers ID's were not to be used to bypass 'do not disturb' signs unless something was on _fire_," Stark snarled, head invisible in the machinery.

"I could set something on fire," Steve suggested. "Bucky?"

The soldier's attention was wavering; it had been a very long, very chaotic day, but he knew this joke, at least.

"…'cn set something 'n fire."

"You brought—oh God." Stark stuck his head up out of the machinery and eyed the two of them. Grease covered his face, his hair looked as if it had recently suffered through a wind tunnel. "What's wrong now."

"The arm. It's—"

"Told you. Told you, told you, told you." With each mutter came a movement: one foot on the casing, the jump down, the stride over. "That's what you get for employing crap HYDRA tech on your super-soldiers. Pop it off, we'll take a look."

Bucky… hadn't expected that. Should've, but hadn't.

"I'm not taking it off."

"It's a dead limb, Barnes. I can't charge it _on _you."

"They did."

"No they didn—what do you mean they did?" Without asking, Stark grabbed the arm, lifted it, checked out the wiring and the energy source, flicking at it idly. Since the arm was dead, Bucky didn't stop him on instinct – which was a very, very good thing for Stark. "Okay, _no_, they _didn't_. They would have to run a charge through it for at least six hours every couple of months."

"So?"

"You're telling me they had you basically lean on a low-power electric fence for six hours every two months?"

He was too tired at this point to recall much, but he did recall this. "You made weapons. Weapons take…" Pierce had called it something, Pierce had called him lots of things… "Forging."

"Whatever. I'm not charging it on you because the only thing I have recharges it _fast_. It'd kill you. So, off it comes."

He thought about protesting – _it's my arm, how are you going to get it back on, am I going to get it back on, what if I don't know how, without it I'm not the winter soldier I'm not Bucky I'm not anyone without it…. _But complaining had done nothing over the years so he said nothing now. He just shook his head and let Stark, groaning and complaining, lead them to a further back portion of his lab, moaning about how shirtless assassins weren't allowed in his lab except, well, one, but Nat was elsewhere.

Stark stopped beside a medical-looking cot and slapped it with his hand. "Up. Gotta figure this out the hard way."

It didn't look like the chair, so he got up and sat. Steve lingered nearby, nervous but letting Stark do, more or less, whatever Stark wanted.

"Okay. So. To slow it down to 1940's tech which, for the record, is like trying to put your iPod's playlist onto a floppy disk, I'm going to run it through the same level of computation Zola was using."

"Explaining isn't your speed, Stark." Steve sounded puzzled. Bucky wasn't looking at them. "Why the lecture?"

"Look, I never did anything crazy to the magnet in my chest while it was still _in _me. Nothing that didn't need to be done. And Pepper usually did that. This thing? If it blows back, it could infect his whole system. I got whole body scans when he came in, I wouldn't even _consider _doing it this way if it weren't for him insisting."

Bucky could hear Steve's attention turn to him. "Buck… are you sure you don't want to take off the arm?"

If it got taken off and, at any time, he fell asleep, he might never get it back. Stark wanted the arm. The Winter Soldier had heard need and interest in enough voices to recognize that. Stark wanted to be able to replicate the arm or maybe he just wanted to replace it with his own, superior technology, but what if that was a way to tie Bucky to him too? People wanted the asset.

It wasn't hubris; it was fact. Attempts had been made, offers had been proposed, his opinion was _not relevant_. Losing the arm meant losing much more than just an arm.

"It stays," he said bluntly.

"See? Crazy." Stark plugged a cable into the charging socket of the arm, rolled his eyes, and walked over to a monitor hooked up to a giant box. "You're lucky I didn't hollow this thing out for Barton's pet badger yet."

"Dog." Steve's reproof was amused. "He has a dog."

"Whatever, it pees on my carpet and gets in my lab. Goes in a box."

The computer made a whooshing noise and came on. Steve glanced over at Bucky, who glanced in turn at the cable. The arm was dead as ever. He closed his eyes and waited for what invariably accompanied 'charging.' Then a pulse came through, faint at first, then growing in power. Bucky relaxed when it leveled off, a constant and steady thrum of power that didn't hurt. Accustomed to pain, he never felt the sting of a needle in his neck.

#

Steve arranged the unconscious assassin on the cot then glanced over at Stark. "…he is sleeping, right?"

"It's going to take eight hours to get that thing charged at this rate. At that dose, he should sleep ten. Biometric scanners said enough of the drugs are out of his system, he'll be fine. Doc's going to come in and put in a monitored IV so he'll start getting nutrients. We've got bigger problems." He pulled up a screen above the ancient computer, showing a map of the city. "I sent Banner to go get shwarma. He never came back."

"Stop joking, Stark. Where is the doctor?"

"Possibly? With our psychoterrorist. Banner's Avengers ID was last sighted heading west. No reports of a big green guy but Banner's gotten good at turning his card off when he needs to. Whiiiich is all the time. He was concerned about Faustus getting away and about Prisoner-Zero over there when he left. Plus…"

"Plus what?"

The door to the lab creaked open. Both of them turned to look – and watch as a yellow dog of indeterminate breed nosed its way into the room and padded over to them. Stark sighed heavily.

"As you can see, Barton went with him. And if there's anybody with a bone to pick about mind control, it's Barton. Working together, they could take this guy out before we ever get a hold of him."

"Do they know about the triggers?"

"Yeah, so they'll do their best, but if Banner makes a sciency-enough argument for killing Faustus, or just HULK-SMASHES him, Barton isn't going to be able to stop him."

"So we have to go."

"'We,' being…"

"Me, you, Buck-"

"Someone has to hold down the fort. Nat's out on business, Pepper has been stuck at Stark Industries in talks with Kronos. Last time I ditched her with an unconscious assassin, she sent four suits out with the dry cleaning. 'Suits with the suits'. They still haven't come back. AND she told Nat dozens of stories on their damn sleepover."

"So me and Bucky."

"Cap. He's not stable. And you haven't slept."

"He's getting better. And I slept decades. I think I'm good."

"Yes, but in the meantime, you gotta take somebody or I'm not giving you Barton's position."

"Sam." Steve chose on a whim but it was really the only logical choice. Sam was good with people. Sam had calmed Bucky down last night when Steve's opening act, after decades apart, had been (necessarily) to try and incapacitate his friend. Multiple times.

He glanced back at Stark, who had crossed the lab to greet the doctor coming in with the IV. Maybe it was better Stark wasn't coming. Everything in Bucky's body language had said the man was terrifying and, even if they were going on a hunt for Banner and Barton, maybe it was better not to take someone terrifying to an assassin.

#

whoops. yeah. y'know when it's the holidays and work explodes and uh yeah. At least I know where, uh, this is going. Holy crap, Banner and Barton were not supposed to go multiplayer and run off.

Reviews are happily read!


	8. Chapter 8

#

When Bucky woke up, he took stock of his surroundings. No panic yet, because he had become accustomed to drifting off during the charging procedure as part of pain management. No one working on him cared if he slept, because he wasn't _doing_ anything. Plus, they were probably too terrified of him to ask if he was blacking out repeatedly. No, that question went to the neuroscientists— who all gave him passing mental grades or they would lose their jobs.

So. Surroundings. High ceiling, comfortable lighting. Decent cot. A machine going 'beep' next to him. Something alive lying across his legs – between thirty and fifty pounds, it kept shifting. Both of his arms moved when he pushed his weight up on them to get a look at it – the metal arm was fully charged, good.

The alive thing –a dog— lifted its head and looked back at him. Somebody's pet, no attack dog this. It licked its nose and continued staring. The machine began beeping gently. He glanced down at his hand, where the other end of an IV had been inserted. Sticky notes covered his hand, having been taped on to prevent them from falling off.

There was no way he had slept through the insertion of an IV. Damn it, the iron man had drugged him! He went to tear the IV off, then saw the words DON'T PANIC at the beginning of the post-it. Groaning, he held up his metal hand to read the series of notes.

**DON'T PANIC**

**And leave it in. It's putting nutrients and antibiotics back in you. Steve says you're going to hate us both for this. **[new post-it note, new handwriting] **Buck, you needed medical help. This might've been wrong but… **[new post-it note, old handwriting] **But I can live with it. Medical help. That's all we did. Now, JARVIS should have noticed you're reading by now and alerted me to you being awake, so I should be—**

"Good morning, sunshine," the iron man said, striding into the room.

The dog was lying on his legs and refused to move, so Bucky sat up slowly. Surprisingly, he didn't feel… bad. It was a strange feeling—without exhaustion, without a wet need to cough, or the dull pain in his—oh. He had on a knee brace.

"You drugged me," Bucky said, careful to get the words right. He wanted to bend the knee, test and make sure it was still all _his_, but the dog was lying on it and had no intention of moving.

"And you have my formal apology for that," Stark answered as he approached the cot. "Namely because Steve says apologies are important. It was going to be much more comfortable for you to be sleeping when we set your leg, inserted the IV, and ran a full diagnostic. To say nothing of the arm charging."

What if he had wanted to be awake? The thought of what could have happened while he was asleep – who Stark _could_ be working for – the thought that Steve could have been changed or mind-controlled or something and delivering him back to his handlers… _so much could have happened and how did he know it hadn't and this was all –_ then he realized Stark was talking in a controlled, even voice. A steady drone which punctured the spiral of terror.

"Keep breathing. Nothing happened while you were asleep. Everything is fine. Steve's in another part of the tower. The dog is friendly even if it has an uncontrollable bladder and its name is Lucky. You can pet it, it would probably enjoy the attention. Steve's in the tower and nothing has happened to him, or to anyone else, and you are under Stark hospitality for what that's worth and that's certainly something to be confident about, but keep breathing, no one's done anything to you that didn't help you since you went to sleep. Pet the dog, it's been statistically proven to improve mood or at least it probably is, I haven't run the numbers in a while."

Bucky stared. Startled out of the doom-spiral of fear.

"…what? I can recognize panic." Stark pushed himself away from the cot, checking the vitals on the computer with a few quick keystrokes. "The arm is charged, you can unplug. The IV, I'd like you to keep in."

"…knee brace. IV. Useless this way."

"Steve disagrees. For that matter, I disagree. Finding a friend of Steve's, our resident Cap-sicle, isn't useless."

"He already has people," Bucky said.

"There is _no one else_ Steve's age from the '40s. We are running out of WWII survivors in general. Steve has 'people,' he doesn't have anyone like you."

Bucky said nothing, so Tony went on, making movements on the screen, moving things from one side to the other.

"Unfortunately, he seems to assume you're just as indestructible as you were in the forties, so he's wants you to come on the 'hunt-down-Faustus' trip, doubling as a 'hunt-down-renegade-Avengers-idiots' trip."

"Steve's not going anywhere with me." Panic started to spiral again. "Steve can't go anywhere with me. That's %^&amp;*ing obvious."

"Cap is going with you," Stark said with absolute confidence. "And Falcon is going with you both. Those two took down HYDRA, as Avengers we took down Loki and an entire alien race hell-bent on invasion. I think they can handle a whackjob psychologist."

"I'm not—"

"Look, nobody's safe around Banner either. Which is who they're going to stop. I wouldn't send you, but Cap didn't exactly give me a vote because he told me what he was going to do, _in detail_, if I tried to keep you here against your will."

"… you don't…."

"Seem like the type to listen? No. But it looks good for PR when Cap's on my side."

"So…" Bucky was losing the conversation again. "So what are you doing?"

"You've got three days. Steve's not going to let you keel over in pursuit of Faustus, given that the guy isn't an intergalactic threat. I recommend you sleep. A lot."

"I don't need to—"

"Yeah, y'do. Buttsniffer?" This last was addressed to the dog, whose tail happily started thumping the cot again. "Make sure he stays."

Thump thump thump.

"Good." Still addressing the dog. "Still haven't forgiven you for Tuesday."

And that was how Bucky left things with Stark.

#

Every time he woke up, he remembered more. It took less time to come back to himself, because there was a 'himself' to come back to. The dog had adopted him, more or less, even when he moved from Stark's lab to the bedroom Steve had originally showed him. It was 'his' and the dog didn't find it weird that he slept on the floor, deciding instead that it meant an awful lot of bedspace for Dog.

Remembering.

That passed in and out like a radio station. He still hadn't really talked to Steve, though it was coming. He could feel conversations on the horizon, things that Steve wanted to ask him or tell him that went beyond 'how are you,' 'shouldn't you eat,' and other questions with difficult answers.

The knee brace helped. He didn't want to admit that. The knee brace helped. And he was on antibiotics, so the cough and the inflammation around his shoulder were slowly, _slowly_ leaving.

A pathetic sort of soldier.

_That_ hurt. Realizing that there was a sizeable part of him that didn't feel he was any good unless he was of use and realizing, upon carefully broaching the subject with Steve, that it wasn't a part that was going to go away. 'Decades of use,' Steve had said, 'and they didn't treat you like a human being. Buck, there are people – soldiers – going through that now who haven't had that happen, and _they're_ struggling to adjust.'

Though, as he was reminded at every turn, he had support which many other veterans didn't. He could live at Stark Tower, he could eat at Stark Kitchens, Jarvis knew where he was at all times – and yet all that just conspired to remind him that he was an enemy of the state. And had been for decades.

The night of the second full day, Steve made sure he was safely in his room, made sure he took something to help him sleep, and left.

Bucky promptly tossed the pills, put the knee brace back on, and opened the window. Stark had left him alone in the lab again that day. It was the work of moments, with HYDRA's training, to get everything he needed: Barton's last-known-position and access to Jarvis's surveillance in his bedroom.

Lucky watched him from the bed, interested but not interested enough to follow him out the window. Barton had probably trained it not to come careening after him. Good. If all went as planned, nobody would know enough to follow, including Steve.

It took some doing, but he got out of his room, quietly broke the window of one two floors down (where he had also disabled security), and broke back in. The door there was unlocked. Exiting the tower after that was easy and by the time he was walking out into the moonlight, he was only just limping.

The first cab driver that stopped probably thought he was going to get a huge tip, picking up a fare in this area, this late. Maybe even Captain America.

"Where to?" the man asked as the door opened.

"Nearest bus station."

The man obligingly pulled onto the public streets then, with a final glance in the rearview mirror, joked:

"Going to the bus station this time of night, coming out of the hero-tower, and you aren't taking back-up?"

"I am back-up."

The statement –once true, now false, but true again – sent him into a mental tail-spin, which he didn't surface from until the cab stopped in front of the bus station. In his confusion and hurry to get out of the vehicle, the taxi driver got a $50 tip.

"Thanks, Cap!" the man cheered as Bucky slammed the door. Gah. It took the rest of his energy to get on the bus for Chesapeake Bay, where Barton and Banner would be doing… whatever it was they were doing. Six to eight hours on the bus was like another day of recuperation and, if the pair had found Faustus by the time he got there, so much the better.

#

For anyone who knows Bucky from the comics, he DOES do this kind of idiotic thing. Like training with broken ribs and calling himself a 'fast healer.' [argh, Buck, why.]

To anyone who has hung in there to read this drabble thus far [and to those who've reviewed], y'know what, you're cool. And I hope it amuses. :) Fighting the urge to replot and rewrite the whole thing but I just don't got the time right now, so I'm gonna plunge forward while I still want to tell this story. == Edit: I did. Cheers, and thank you.


	9. Chapter 9

Happy New Year and sorry I vanished. (Also, I got the new omnibus for Trial of Captain America and oh my Lord, aaaaaall the Bucky feels…) But I got this written, so here's some Hawkeye and Hulk being clandestine and maybe where this story is going! (Also, I got the first book of Hawkeye, so cheers to anyone seeing the winks in here)

Thank you to everyone who reads and everyone who reviewed. 3 I love feedback. Also, holy crap, did anyone else notice how many bloody B names there are in this? I didn't even. Barton, Bucky, Banner. If I were calling James 'Buchanan', that'd be one more… sorry guys. Can't change it now, so I'm plowin forward.

#

#

The front desk attendant paid little attention to the two men who came in just after 3pm – they were two of legion on the busy Friday afternoon. By their conversation, it was clear they were here for the taller one's book tour about soil in Antarctica and they were travelling on a budget. She directed 'Don Janes' and 'Rolf Whitehead' to their room on the second floor and thought no more about them.

-which was exactly what Clint had wanted.

"Nothing in the minibar," Banner noted from the far side of their two-bed room. Clint didn't glance up from unfolding the map; he knew the layout of the room already. It had a minibar, two beds, and a sliding glass door leading onto a small balcony. It was nice to have a quick escape route if things went the kind of south where ninjas showed up to kill you in your hotel room. The balcony 'view' overlooked a parking lot, good view of the freeway, but way off beyond that, you could almost see the ocean.

"Can't drink right now anyway," he replied. The map of the city took up a full quarter of the floral bedspread. Neither of them knew Chesapeake well and it would have been easier to take a taxi to Faustus's offices then drive the car they had brought from Manhattan. They needed a car for a meeting like this though. Needed to be able to get away fast.

"Doctor's offices are on 409th," Clint noted. "You want to drive?"

"I want to take another look at the plan." Banner sat down on the opposite bed. "Are you _sure _you want to do this? You have Stark thinking the whole thing is my idea when you're the one who hasn't sat down since Bucky got in."

"…"

"And I'm only here because you stole my car," Banner continued.

"Ah, easy answer for that, mine was—"

"That's why you don't pay for Dodge Challengers in cash to women you just slept with. Point is, you're bringing the Avengers into this."

"You see masks? And you didn't answer the question." Clint followed a street on the map with a finger, noting its twists and turns.

"You really want me driving," Banner said.

"It's your car."

"It's a bad idea."

Clint kept following the street, saying nothing until he stopped, a long way from where he had started, took out a pen, and put a circle with some dashes on their destination. Then, added a couple of others in case someone got a hold of the map. Then 'folded' the map into something that came out looking like a 6-year-old's Christmas present for mommy.

"Look," he began. "Cap's friend came in accused of murder, half-dead on top of that. Nobody lookin' out. That pisses me off. Cap's not gonna hunt anyone down til Stark gives the okay and Stark's not gonna give the okay until hell freezes over in SHIELD-Land. Cap will keep his people safe. That's what Cap does. We're going to clear the airways."

"If Avengers are in this, you can't kill this guy," Banner said, tone solemn.

"Who said I was killin'—"

"Ever since New York last year, you go off at the slightest hint of mind control. Cap's friend, Selvig, the man in the subway back in January—"

"_That was different."_

"You wanted me here because you think he can't control me. If you're wrong, I could break him. Break his apartment complex and most of this nice little resort town."

"So you're driving?" Clint shoved the map into a pocket. Banner seemed about to say something else, sighed, then nodded.

"Fine, I'm driving."

"Good, you need gas."

#

The building had been recently built, emulating the appearance of the rectangular Chesapeake City Hall. A sheer beige wall stood before Barton and Bruce, either side of the building made up of paneled windows reflecting the grey-white sky of the day. Parking had been easy, though Bruce walked through the arched door of the office building muttering 'they better validate this.'

According to the directory just inside, there were 4 psychologists' offices, 2 psychiatrists, a pharmacy, and half a dozen other medical plaza specialists in the building. Doctor John Faustus was Room 310.

"No paparazzi here," Barton noted. "You'd think local press would be here, seeing as he walked out of a morgue a few days ago."

"Well, Tony said people tend to do what he tells them to. Maybe he told them to leave," Bruce mused.

"Yeah, I already don't like this guy," Barton said, scowling, and headed for the stairs, rather than the gold-doored elevator. Bruce followed him, somewhat bemused by the action. If they really were here for a conversation – well, they weren't. They had brought a getaway car, for crying out loud; this was probably going to go terribly.

"Gotta knew where stairs are," the bowman said as he pulled open the stairwell door. "Already checked the outside paneling and there's three ways down from the 3rd floor."

"Remember when Steve told everyone not to put me in stressful situations? Gosh, that was fun."

"This isn't stressful, it's a shrink," Barton replied and pushed open the door at the top of the stairs. The pair stepped out into a short carpeted hallway. No windows here, but the domed lights overhead cast a golden glow over the corridor. Barton took a few quick steps down the hall and opened the door next to a copper-plated '310' label.

"Professor—er, Doc? Doc. Faustus?" he called. "I had an appointment?"

"Don, you're early!"

The doctor came to the door and ushered them both in. The magnificent red beard he had had in the mall was trimmed much shorter; he wore no glasses, and the hair was trending much closer to gray, but it was hard to disguise a man of his build and bearing. Barton immediately slid into the false identity they had discussed.

"Good to meet you, doc, I've been assigned 6 months of counseling because I—"

"You recognized me, Agent Barton," Faustus interrupted. "As did Dr. Banner here. I know who you are."

The bowman didn't blink but Bruce could see him running through alternate scenarios in his mind.

"Agent Barton, if I do not want to be found or seen, I am not found or seen. Your morgue attendants can –or rather cannot – attest to that."

"Why would you want to, then?" Barton challenged.

"You two were not supposed to follow me down here but, if you do not find me here, James will not even attempt to come."

"You want the guy who _shot _you to _follow_ you."

"I needed to test if James's oath to never kill me would hold. None of this involves you, Agent Barton."

"If it doesn't involve me, maybe I never saw you here," Barton said snarkily. "Why do you care if he'll kill you or not? Where's your win?"

"Because, when we were working with the Winter Soldier, tabula rasa, Zola and I, _I_ promised James that a day would come when our direction of Hydra would fall. I could see it, even then. If he kept loyal to me, never killed me despite the orders of his masters, I could get his memories back. We didn't erase them, you know. We built over them, hundreds of times, cities beneath cities like Rome, Paris, Seattle, London. The triggers keep the old cities at bay."

Barton listened to this without response; clearly the psychiatrist was eager to monologue. Quiet as a knife but Bruce could feel him seething like a kettle left hours on the stove.

"I'm still not seeing your win," Barton said, when Faustus paused.

"The mere telling of what I _have_ done is overwhelming. I doubt you're able to listen to what I _will_ do."

"You're right. Grab your evil cape, we'll head up to Manhattan and someone more patient can figure it out with you. We got a lot of patient people up there."

"_Agent Barton, why don't you go look out the window_?" Faustus suggested idly. The suggestion puzzled the archer for just a second and he moved towards the window, first hesitantly then moving with more ease, looking down at the street below. Barton wouldn't just break off an interrogation like that – not willingly.

"Barton, weren't we—" Bruce began.

"Agent Barton isn't an appropriate lead for this conversation," the doctor said smoothly. "I would much rather work with someone who managed to graduate high school."

"So the window thing…" Bruce couldn't stop glancing over at his companion.

"I have a certain skill with words. You may have heard. He is perfectly fine. For now."

Bruce took his fury and put it somewhere else – down a hole he kept in the back of his mind, anything to keep from feeding the beast.

"I don't appreciate shows of power," he said, voice even. "How about you tell me the message and we go?"

"Just tell James he needs to come visit me. Bring the captain. He knows this already, I just can't have you telling him I'm not here or 'dealing' with me yourselves. You two have simply have gotten involved in something very much none of your business."

"You really have the ability to give him back his memories?"

"I do not lie_, _Dr. Banner."

"Maybe not, but I'm familiar with supervillains modifying the truth. Can you even do what you're saying?"

"And I'm not familiar with being _challenged._ _Agent Barton, would you be so good as to open the window_?" the doctor asked. His back was to Barton; Faustus didn't even have to turn to see the bowman do it. There was noise enough as confirmation – the sound of the latch clicking, then another – a window grating upwards. Fury turned from the hole in Bruce's mind and began climbing back up the tunnel like a dog laboriously dragging a bone.

"Are you trying to make me angry?" Bruce asked quietly.

"No, I'm trying to make you understand. Your mind is terribly pliable, but you don't act on what you think. Agent Barton is terrified of being controlled – so terrified that he'll do what he is told to stop it from happening, take orders from anyone… including me. So stop _doubting_ and _go_."

"I'll tell him you're here," Banner said.

"Agent Barton, there's a draft. Could you close the window?"

Barton appeared to come to himself, looking at the window, then back at Faustus, full of snark.

"Close it yourself and get ready. We're leaving."

"Oh, actually, we're not," Bruce said. The bowman blinked at him, a trace of puzzlement passing over his face.

"Uh, pretty sure we are, Rolf."

"Well, _we're_ leaving. But not with him."

Barton looked from one to the other. "…why?"

"He made a convincing argument. So we're going."

Faustus chose that moment to chime in. "And could you show my next patient in on your way out? I'm trying to build my case load and it sets a bad precedent to go long."

" 'course," Barton muttered as they walked out, deliberately shutting the door behind them. A 20-something young man with a Navy crewcut stood waiting in the hallway. As they passed him, Barton gripped him by the shoulder – "that guy's a quack" – let go, and kept walking.

Then, on their way to the elevator, he glanced over at Banner: "What the hell happened?"

#

Following the validation of parking, Barton led the way to a Thai joint around the corner, where they made friends with at least one of the other tenants of the psych building (a blonde woman in her thirties who heard Banner talking about hypnosis). Finally, full of tom yam and massaman curry, they went back to the hotel.

"I turned off Stark's auto-locator, so you get to tell him," Bruce said, zipping the keycard in and out of the door. "See if he wants to bring someone high-profile down to out the guy."

"He's not doing anything illegally by living." Barton stepped forward and pushed open the door, entering first. "I got personal experience with that and until we have evidence, cops won't be interested and Stark will shrug." The archer's hand came up and Bruce stopped immediately in the entry corridor, his view partially blocked by the corner of the hotel room. Still, he could see a man in a black jacket and cap sitting in the corner chair. The sliding glass door stood slightly ajar behind him. Shadows cloaked most of his features.

Barton moved in cautiously, heading for the dresser across from the intruder. The man was dozing, quieter than he had any right to be. The archer pulled his bow silently from behind the dresser and notched an arrow from behind the TV to the string. Keeping the bow angled slightly down, he motioned Bruce farther back with his head. Bruce ignored him but Barton wasn't facing him.

"Hey," Barton called softly. "Bucky."

The Winter Soldier looked up and did a threat assessment in seconds. Bow, arrow, Barton, Banner, sliding door, distance. Moving as methodically as Barton had a minute before, he sat up, set two guns and a knife on the floor, and leaned back again.

"Where's the doctor?" he asked. His voice sounded less death-warmed-over than it had when Bruce saw him last, but there was a rasp and a cough to it. The man wasn't well, but he was clearly well enough to get _here_.

"We're negotiating," Barton said. "Does Sta—does Cap know you're here?"

"No, Steve had me on bedrest," Bucky replied. That phrasing – Bruce thought about it and realized, suddenly, that the assassin had read their files somehow. Somehow, Bucky knew that Barton hated bedrest and would understand, more than anyone, why it was unacceptable for the 'merely human' to be on bedrest while the superheroes ran around intact. Barton regularly got his butt handed to him without even changing into costume and did more travelling for personal justice-dealing-with-bad-guys reasons than was physically safe.

To Barton's credit, the bow didn't lower.

"Probably a good reason for that," the bowman said.

"This is my problem. Not Cap's. Not… the iron man's."

He'd forgotten Stark's name, Bruce thought. For a moment, Bucky had forgotten the iron man was Tony Stark.

"So you came down," Bruce said, stepping into the room. The assassin's eyes followed him.

"Did you find Faustus?"

Did he have to repeat that name to keep it in his mind? How long could he hold a new name before it became part of the drifting miasma of memory in Bucky's mind? Did it depend on how much he liked or disliked the person?

"He has some conditions before he'll talk to you," Bruce replied. "Namely… Cap being around. If you went, he'd tell you the same thing."

"No one ever tells me the same thing," the assassin said and there was a blade in the words – a real and palpable threat. Tell me the truth or things will start happening here.

"Just wait for Steve to catch up with us," Bruce said. "If you came by bus, you've been up all night. Barton will make a call to Cap, they'll come down and make movements _legally_. I don't want any… stress, and you don't need any more heat on you."

There was a threat in Bruce's words too, if the Winter Soldier could catch it, and Bucky seemed to. His handlers had probably known enough to teach him not to go up against the Hulk in close quarters. He thought about the statement a moment, then nodded. Thank God, at least that had gone off according to plan.

"Did you bring medications? The stuff the doctor was—" Bruce began.

"None of your business."

Probably just the antibiotics and the stimulants then; no painkillers or sleeping aids. Great, they could share the hotel room with a wired Winter Soldier. Damn it, Cap.

"Barton, you want to—"

"Calling," the bowman answered, putting the bow back behind the dresser. In the meantime, the ghost of the intelligence community had drifted back into his nap – knife in hand. Looked like Bruce wasn't going to be getting any sleep tonight.

If the Winter Soldier hadn't broken into _this_ hotel room with such ease, he would have seriously considered getting another.

#

Had to fix a lot of this one so maybe, maybe, hopefully, it reads smoother. Longer chapter too, but you guys definitely deserve it for waiting. Thanks for reading!


	10. Chapter 10

#

The Winter Soldier's plan had not involved crashing in on the archer and Banner's hotel room but it had happened. The plan also didn't involve nightmares keeping him up half the night. Banner was supposed to stay up, probably, but the bowman made coffee and told him to get some sleep because 'he [Barton] had this.'

Bucky watched them both through narrowed eyes and said nothing. He had already stolen the map with its various circled sites and, based on the address of the Thai food place they had been to, he knew which one they had gone to.

Barton offered him a cup of the first pot of coffee and Bucky refused. It smelled amazing though.

What are you _doing_ here, his mind asked him, as if from a long way off and between nightmares. This wasn't the plan. What possessed you to come to Virginia and break into their hotel room? You're not under orders.

'It seemed like a good idea at the time.' Steve must have said that hundreds of times on missions or maybe it was Bucky who had held to that one. Maybe it even predated the war; maybe this was how he always made plans. But he hadn't made plans in years, so how was this one working? How were things working if he wasn't under orders?

-unless he was under orders and he had forgotten that he was given orders.

_That_ thought spurred a whole new angle of nightmare.

Barton woke him up at three a.m. by making more coffee. Banner slept through the activity. Bucky sat in the dark, smelling the sharp scent of instant coffee and watching the glow of the green smoke detector light on the wall. Below, a couple was arguing in the parking lot, just barely visible through the slightly ajar sliding door and the early morning fog. His own breath rasped in his throat as he breathed and he shifted position.

The archer knew the moment he moved that Bucky was awake, but said nothing. There was the sound of coffee pouring.

"What if I'm under orders?" Bucky asked.

The sound of his own voice was like a reminder that everything that was happening was real. That he should be pretending to be Steve's Bucky, instilling confidence or instilling respect at the very least, that there should be a performance going on so Barton would fear him. The bowman sat down on the opposite bed.

"If you were under orders, you wouldn't be asking that question. It's not how it works."

"They could…" _They could want me to_? No, that didn't make sense; it was too delicate for his handlers to instill insubordination, just so they could convince the subject he wanted to obey. Where was the guarantee that he would overcome his own doubt? They wouldn't have, but… if he wasn't under orders, why was he here?

"What brought me here, though?" he asked, more to his hands than Barton. His body seemed to know things, actions, crimes, better than his mind did.

"You wanted justice. Or, at the very least, answers." Barton sipped the coffee. "You certainly didn't come to relax."

"What did…"

"Faustus," the archer supplied.

"…Faustus… tell you?"

"He wants Cap in the room with him. Not a good idea. But he's not doing anything illegal, so what we can do is limited."

"I'll take care of it."

The idea had poetic justice to it. It was the kind of thing that happened during war; you didn't 'wait and see', trial and red tape; you took out Nazis where you found them. You did the thing that needed to be done. Only Barton was shaking his head.

"It wouldn't help anyone, especially you. Hell, it would _ruin_ what little life you can try to build. Faustus is established, recently in the news, and he has an office setup. You can't re-kill this guy just because he's alive. Besides, you kill him, you never get your memories back."

"You really think that's an option." The memories and everything surrounding them was like listening to a fairy tale. A fairy tale being told to a soldier by his superiors with an unlikely happy ending. Bucky had come down here because Barton and Banner were down here for him. That was all; he had been clear about exactly what level of bull the idea of getting his memory back was.

"I do," Barton replied. "Seen a lot of magical crap the past few years, I'll believe it if some guy says he has a few puzzle pieces that aren't his."

And Steve would want him to get the memories back. Everyone would want him to get them back, just like everyone would want him to stand trial and move past this and make a life for himself in the chaos that was this century. Thinking about having the memories back, about not living in a haze, brought into focus how kind the fog was sometimes. Unhealthy, debilitating, transparent at just the wrong moments, but if the fog was gone, there would be nothing between him and the choking pressure of the last few decades.

When he realized he had gone quiet, he looked up to answer Barton and realized he had drifted off in the thought, losing hours in the process. A new day had started. The light had changed. There was more coffee – new coffee—and it was morning. Both Barton and Banner were absent, though someone was humming in the bathroom.

Forget Barton. He would kill Faustus and then vanish, just like the media already said he had. It was what they were expecting, Faustus would be out of everyone's hair, and this would no longer be a problem for Steve. It wouldn't stop here, if Faustus was alive; these kinds of things _never_ stopped here. If Bucky ignored everything about this, Faustus would come back – through someone closer to Steve.

Someone had said Peggy was still alive. That would be worse and wasn't going to happen on Bucky's watch.

The Winter Soldier got stiffly to his feet, replacing the guns and stretching the knee in its brace to get a feel for it. Good to know nothing had changed. Pushing the sliding glass door open, he vaulted over the balcony and headed out, map from the dresser in his pocket. It was the right thing to do and after it was done, the right thing was vanishing. Good as orders.

#

Bruce came out of the hour-long shower to find the hotel room empty, which was not how he had left it. The bowman should have been watching the assassin, then they would have gone down to the free breakfast, if they could manage it, and inconspicuously had a meal. Bringing up enough food for the 'big guy' wasn't even considered.

But Barton wasn't here and the full coffeepot was perking happily. A folded piece of stationary, stained with coffee, sat tucked under the pot and, groaning, Bruce unfolded it.

'**nat needs an assist, trickshot stuff, super-sorry, cap'll be here by 10. –b'**

Nothing about the missing assassin, which meant Bucky had left almost as soon as the archer had. The numbers "9:47" glowed blue on the base of the coffeepot. Great. Great.

Breathe. His fingers gripped the dresser tight enough to warp wood and he _couldn't_ get mad. That wouldn't get Bucky back and more importantly, it wouldn't be as rewarding as punching Clint Barton into next week. No, no, remember, he's the one you _can't_ punch into next week. Barton is breakable. Everyone is breakable.

Bruce took a deep breath and tore up the piece of stationary very carefully.

In doing so, he noticed that the sliding glass door stood slightly ajar. Bruce put on some clothes, put a 'do not disturb' sign on the door-handle, and vaulted off the balcony, landing easily on the pavement below. The assassin would be going after the doctor, which meant going back to the office building.

-surrounded by other, similar-height office buildings.

He sighed, remembering Cap's assessment. Bucky would be on a rooftop unless he had reason to be elsewhere. Based on the conversation last night, he hadn't bought the 'he's got your memories' excuse for not killing Faustus. If he didn't get there in a hurry, Faustus would be sniped and that would be the end of it.

Switching on his Avengers ID, he hailed a cab, already recording a message to Stark.

'Winter's in the wind, check rooftops surrounding the doctor's office. Good reason to think we're going to have a sniping attempt, since the doctor _does_ _have a window_. Hawkeye's out of the game." He gave them the address and finished the recording.

If that didn't get them down here in a hurry, nothing would.

#

The guns weren't sniper's weapons. The Winter Soldier had known that before getting up on the rooftop, had known that when he left the hotel room, but somewhere in the trip he had gotten lost in his mind and fallen into habit. Habit being rooftops. Habit didn't take into consideration that his guns didn't have the range to reach the window and no handler was going to hand him the gun he would need to get the job done.

Get another gun and come back or just leave the roof of this office building. Those were all his mind had to offer in the way of orders and he didn't like either of them. It had been a nightmare getting up with the leg being what it was. Somewhere along the way, he had lost the knee brace, only to find it strapped to the upper part of his metal arm several seconds after settling into position. Out of the way. Sometime, maybe fifteen minutes ago while he was climbing, he had been clever about this. Not that it did much good now. He pulled the knee brace off his arm and replaced it on his leg, watching the window. Its position hadn't changed: several stories down, far too far for sniping.

Wouldn't it be more rewarding to shoot the man point-blank anyway?

He would have to be in speaking range of the man to do that though. And his hands were already trembling with hesitation at the thought of killing the man, in a way they hadn't been when he left the hotel room. And if he couldn't kill the man, then maybe there really was a block in his mind and what if there were also the cities beneath cities? It could be real, like Atlantis or El Dorado; a road back to who he had once been.

So get off the roof and go try to kill him, his mind murmured. An order. Thank God. An order that asked no questions.

Of course, his mind continued. If you can't kill him, the path exists. That thought stalled out his progress, halfway down the fire escape. The path exists and he won't show you the path unless you bring Cap to him, which you won't, which means you'll never find the path and all these trigger words will_ stay in your head._

No. Even if he couldn't kill Faustus, he had… other skills. Skills he didn't want to remember he had, much less that he had taught those skills to others. They hadn't come to mind since he left his handlers, even when he needed intel from Sam, even when he had wanted Faustus to leave him alone in the mall… if they came to mind now, maybe he was the same person he was before, maybe—

#

"Hey."

Bruce saw the Winter Soldier hear his voice; the smaller man's whole body tensed up, one hand going to the gun on his hip, but not drawing. The assassin had been caught thinking. It was probably a dangerous way to catch him, but Bruce was running out of patience. Moving like a cat, the assassin made eye contact with Bruce and descended a few flights of fire escape stairs, until they were separated by just two flights. The Winter Soldier leaned over the railing, looking down from a highly-defensible position, and Bruce craned to see up and around the stair edges.

"Hey. Bucky Barnes."

The cat-like aspect only strengthened as the assassin kept staring down over the railing, waiting for him to say something important.

"I wouldn't shoot off anything rocket-launcher-sized. Cap's on his way, we'll get this sorted out," Bruce said. The other man glanced in the direction of the window then back at Bruce.

"Where's Barton?" the assassin asked.

"Called away."

This generated no response. It was possible the Winter Soldier was stalling, still trying to come to a conclusion about whatever he had been debating with himself earlier.

"How about you come down another flight as we wait?"

This option was considered. Considered for a long enough stretch of time that Bruce came up one flight of stairs so he could face the assassin, who didn't move or blink. The assassin's control over his heart rate must have been phenomenal. Then again, this was a sniper.

"What made you leave this morning?" Bruce said, trying to keep the assassin from thinking too much.

"I was going to…"

"…kill him? You're going to kill an unarmed man, in an office building, with a handgun."

The assassin considered this again and by now, Bruce could read the man's discomfort in his stance.

"You know you're not stable right now. Put down the gun, come back to the hotel, and—"

The gun came up instead, leveling with Bruce's head. No unsteadiness here and the message was clear as a cell phone in a silent theater. _Don't tell me what to do_.

But Bruce rose to it.

"You shoot me, the other guy takes you out. Okay? It's been a long morning and we don't want to get me banned from the eastern seaboard. Again."

Still the gun held point.

At least, until the railing wobbled. Both men looked down and Bruce groaned internally. Several of Chesapeake Bay's finest had taken position at the base of the fire escape and other strategic positions. No.

"No, no, no, guys, I'm fine, I'm an Avenger!" he called down.

"That ain't a damage blanket!" One of the wittier policemen yelled back. "Have him set the gun down easy and we'll handle the arrest from here. Less green giant that way."

"He hasn't done anything yet, just let me—" He heard the gun's safety click off and so did the men below. He immediately changed tactics, speaking directly to the Winter Soldier on the railing above. "You have _never killed someone outside of orders, don't start now_."

That jarred the assassin. Torn between ideas, the gun wavered. Somewhere far below, some policeman with damn good aim decided to fire a warning shot at the situation. The policeman's bullet pinged off the Winter Soldier's metal arm, denting it considerably but otherwise without injury. The Winter Soldier, on the other hand, took a half second to redirect his aim at the policeman, hesitated – and that was where everything went south.

In that moment of hesitation, Bruce took two giant steps forward and yanked the gun over into the fleshy part of his shoulder, where it could hurt absolutely no one but him. The Winter Soldier stared at him, puzzled, and then there came a… calculating look. A completely unexpected look.

The Winter Soldier pulled the trigger. Redirecting the gun had already scared Bruce; feeling the white heat of a bullet enter his shoulder at point blank _enraged_ him and, as he usually did, the Hulk showed up.

The Winter Soldier had never seen the Hulk. Still, he wore the poker face as he moved gracefully as possible backwards up the fire escape. If Bruce had been thinking, he might have realized what the assassin was doing, maybe even seconds before the Winter Soldier flipped over the railing of the fire escape and dropped several stories to land on the hood of a car. Hulk roared, turned, and began tearing his way down the fire escape and the police began firing.

Everything went to hell and lost Bucky along the way.

#

I'm sorry, that's what happens when I don't plot in advance. Apparently we get Hulk and severe delays in updating. …it hasn't been a lovely start to the year. Sorry, and thank you to everyone who has stuck around; I appreciate you and your kind words a lot and hope the story manages to entertain/make sense. :)


	11. Chapter 11

This chapter was in development for quite a while – sorry! Wanted to get Sam's perspective right and I didn't feel it was for a long time. Plus, we change perspectives a few times so I wanted it to be… personal. I dunno, this fic's gotten kind longer than I expected and I wanted to do right by it and you all. J

Also, guys, Brubaker's comic run on Captain America? Gorgeous. Eeeeeee~ 3 I have amassed all the omnibuses and I haven't been this happy bout comics since readin' Fables.

#

"Please, please tell me he did not just put a hole in the Hulk's shoulder!" Sam yelled as Captain America, otherwise known as Steve in full red-white-and-blue gear, and he went running down the alley. The incident didn't require a lot of interpretation: the Winter Soldier had just shot Hulk. Even from several dozen yards away and a couple of flights down, that much was clear and Steve was moving like WWIII had broken out on a fire escape in a suburb of Chesapeake.

"He's confused!" Cap yelled back.

"You don't shoot the Hulk because you're confused!"

You could shoot when you thought you might die, but not at someone who yanked your gun into their shoulder to prevent you from shooting someone else. Firing at Hulk was an act of calculation. Sam was pretty sure Cap knew that.

If the cops didn't have a raging Hulk on their hands, they would have taken down the Winter Soldier.

If Cap and Sam didn't have to deal with a raging Hulk, Cap would have been going after Bucky.

Either way, it worked out for the assassin, who had vaulted off the fire escape, landed on someone's Buick, and was booking it towards the medical arts building across the street. Calculation and expert execution.

Cap hurled his shield in the direction of the Police vs. Hulk conflict. The shield did its usual ping-off-three-buildings-and-a-light-pole activity before slamming into the side of Hulk's head. The green giant roared and the police backed away, calling for back up that would be no better prepared than they were. Moments like this, it would have been nice if the Winter Soldier hadn't grounded him. Ignoring the familiar irritation, Sam started running towards the uniformed men.

"Get out of here, we got this!"

Ordinarily, the police might have been hesitant, but he was with Captain America and the Hulk was something else together. The men retreated at a run as Cap maneuvered Hulk back towards the corner of an alley, keeping always a jump or two ahead of the green giant's grasp. This got Hulk out of the public eye and out of an area where he could smash cars, public fixtures, and people…

But into an area where there was just Cap to smash.

Sam rejoined them just as Cap finished driving Hulk back into the alley. The situation looked grim, but nothing the Avengers hadn't faced before: a panting, furious thing out of gamma-radiated nightmares about to smash Cap into the ground. But this was different – this was Bruce, and Bruce was hesitating.

"Cap, you wanna—" Sam began.

"I apologize," Cap yelled up at the towering figure.

Hulk took a breath and roared at the super-soldier, the sound like a train going by only feet away. Cap did nothing, no step back, no wince, though the blast would have made a smaller man stumble backwards.

"I'm happy to pay for any medical bills," Cap continued.

A chuff of indignant exasperation.

"You're one of the very few I reasonably could, on his behalf," Cap said quietly.

A sigh. Hulk shook his head and growled at the suggestion, reluctantly probing at where the bullet had entered his shoulder. After a couple moments of checking, he brushed off his shoulder, growled again. The bullet had gone cleanly through and his healing factor had already compensated for it.

"He is a good man. We were soldiers together. I am sorry for the actions he took and the situation he's put you in, Banner."

Placated, the Hulk seemed to shake itself, sighing again, and sat, knocking over several garbage cans as he did so.

The transformation from Hulk to Banner was as gradual as aging, or the deterioration of eyesight. There was Hulk and a minute of changes later, there was Banner, sitting on the ground and gripping his head.

"Did I hurt any—" Banner asked after a moment, lacking even the energy to look up.

"No. No, everyone is fine."

"God, that was fun," the scientist muttered. "There's… argh, there's a spare pair of pants in my car, if someone… wants to grab them…"

For a mile-a-minute soldier like Cap, this was quick work. Momentarily, Banner had pants again, as well as a wrinkled extra-large button-down shirt that Cap had found under the front seat. Banner pulled on the shirt but didn't bother buttoning it.

"I'm sorry for what happened. Bucky is very confused," Cap began. Banner snorted, still leaning against the alley wall.

"He's not confused. He just wasn't happy I was here and _definitely_ not happy those yahoos decided to shoot at him."

The super-soldier didn't bat an eye; much worse things had happened to the Winter Soldier than some cops taking a potshot at him.

"Thank you for stopping him," Cap said.

"Yeah, well, Hawkeye's rubbing off on me about looking out for people." Banner massaged his shoulder and looked in the direction the police had gone. "Unless you think you're going to need the other guy, I'm going. I don't… I don't want to stick around Chesapeake, not after this."

"We'll be fine. Are you alright to drive?"

Banner rolled his shoulder, glanced in the direction of the medical arts building, then at Cap. "Does it matter? You've got a murder to stop and you've wasted enough time caring for me."

"Bucky won't kill him. Are you going to be all right?"

"Your pal just shot me in the shoulder, I'd say he's willing to—"

"Which was wrong, and you took a bullet for policemen. Thank you."

"The _other guy_ took—" Banner protested.

"_You_ took a bullet, to keep 'my pal' from making a terrible choice in the heat of the moment and proving everything everyone says about him is right. Sam. Do you want to get…?" Cap gestured at the medical arts building and it legitimately took a minute for Sam to connect the dots.

"You're not coming?"

"I should stay with Banner."

"_I'm fine_."

"Then we'll bring the car around for Sam and Bucky," Cap said, like it was some special thing that needed two people to do. Which was odd. When Steve was being odd, it usually meant something was going on.

"You sure you wanna do this this way?" Sam asked. "Your friend might actually get his memories back from this, if the doctor caves. If he does, you need to be there. And if he doesn't cave, if Bucky does try to kill this guy, I'm not going easy on him—"

"I believe in Bucky," Cap said. "He won't kill Faustus. And I believe that if he got his memories back… I'm the last person he would want to see."

And there it was. The trip wire of guilt, buried beneath a leafy spread of friendship and altruism. Captain America was a soldier of the 1940s, Steve was a **_soldier_**, and it took a long time to get anything from him in terms of emotion. Guilt was nothing new to Sam, not when the majority of the veterans he spoke to carried a fair amount of survivor's guilt, regardless of the situation. When Steve had opened up, he talked about Bucky's fall like the guilt was a part of himself; carried it the way he carried his visits to Peggy in the hospital or his monthly Sunday morning visits to Arlington. And he had found a way to carry it now, even when Bucky was alive. Bucky would want to see him, fine, but only if Bucky was broken. If Bucky was whole, to Steve's mind, he would know who had let him fall and Steve didn't want to be there for that.

Too bad.

"If I'm coming out of that building with two people in custody, I'm going to need you. This guy has mental powers, you said, and the Winter Soldier ain't the kind of guy you just bash over the head," Sam said.

Across the street, the fire alarm began going off in the medical arts building.

"Evacuating the place," Sam said. That didn't bode well for the whole 'not-killing-Faustus' idea. You evacuated a building when you wanted everyone out for a certain period of time and it seemed highly unlikely an emergency was actually happening, right now, with Captain American already running towards the medical arts building.

"Bruce, you gonna be—" Sam began, but the scientist was already headed for the parking lot on the other side of the surrounding buildings.

"I'll drive the getaway car. Get the patriots back before somebody else gets hurt."

#

Sam caught a glimpse of the super-soldier's boot at the top of the stairs of medical arts building, heard the door bang open, and then nothing but the sound of running footsteps in the hall. Cap could run like the devil when he wanted to and right now, he wanted to. They were the only ones heading in and up – there had been enough people (patients and doctors) in the parking lot, milling around and wondering why the evacuation. No one had stopped two superheroes from running in.

The door of what must be Faustus's office was open into the hallway. Sam didn't have long to dwell on it, because Faustus's voice carried out into the hall as well, over the sound of the alarm.

"Ah, hello James."

Cap slowed his pace as he approached the door, hidden by the wall. For a moment, Sam thought about putting in the earplugs they had brought, but they might have to converse with the doctor to get to the bottom of this. Bucky certainly was. And beyond Bucky shooting him in the Manhattan mall, there hadn't been a problem yet so the porous yellow buds they'd picked up at the airport could stay in storage. Cap shifted position with his shield, ready for a charge. Unseen in the room, Faustus's voice droned on. Sam _hoped_ they wouldn't need the earplugs.

"The gun is very impressive and I take it that you've made up your mind that I'm bluffing? There's no way to remove the trigger words and you're condemned to this. A practical idea, a very decisive idea. You should certainly want to kill me, if it were true."

"And I do," the Winter Soldier said.

"But if it's false, and I can remove the triggers and restore your obsolete memories… you've ended your only chance at normalcy. Well, you've already done that, by not bringing the Captain."

"Told you I wouldn't." The assassin sounded confident. A break in the words, the tiniest of uncertainties, and then back to confidence. "And I don't want him to."

"So you resort to murder." There was no fear in Faustus's tone, no tremor or intimidation. Even from an outside perspective, it was infuriating.

"I have skills." The Winter Soldier's voice was a razor again. "I have skills that I can use without killing you and you'll tell me. You'll tell me what I need to know."

"Torture, on an unarmed American citizen who has broken no law, and no mind control to blame? James, what would your Captain say?"

Silence. Ahead of Sam, Cap's face went very still. The super-soldier took a quiet, rattling breath, about to step forward to stop the event, when Sam stepped forward into the doorway ahead of him.

Faustus stood at the side of the desk, facing the Winter Soldier, who held the gun pointed at his right kneecap. The pair were very quiet, despite the tableau, and Bucky gave no sign that Sam's appearance had surprised him. Faustus, for his part, smiled.

"I'm doing this," the Winter Soldier said.

"Doesn't go against anything I've seen Daredevil or Punisher do in the course of an interrogation," Sam said. That took the assassin a second, no doubt trying to pull up a mental file on the individuals.

"I'm not them," Bucky said finally. Sam sidestepped around the pair, coming into the assassin's line of sight. Unsurprisingly, the assassin was avoiding eye contact with anything but Faustus. That was fine, Sam just needed to talk.

"No, _Cap's_ not them. You're whoever you want to be. Defined by things like this, right now."

The Winter Soldier looked to Faustus, wavering a little. His grip on the gun tightened.

"Let him decide," Faustus contributed, refusing to even look at Sam. "You'll notice _I'm_ not controlling him."

And the statement… made sense. It was Bucky's decision, it was pointless to say anything to the contrary. But even that thought made little sense and Sam could hear Cap hissing at him to do something. That was background noise compared to the look of sudden panic that had stolen across Bucky's face. _What if he is? _the assassin's expression asked_. What if he is, what if he makes me do something to someone else and I don't—_

The assassin's next words came quickly: "Get out of here, Falcon. I'm handling this."

An easy opening to begin talking him down. "You're _handling_ this and what's going to happen after you '_handle'_ it? You have to live in this world. You can't do that on the run, killing everyone who threatens you. Nobody gets to live that way."

"But we're…" the assassin started, then stopped, struggling with the words.

"We're not at war. Not with Faustus." Cap stepped into the room and red flags started waving in Sam's mind the moment Dr. Faustus smiled. The Winter Soldier stared back at Cap, then glanced at Falcon, yet the gun trained on Faustus's kneecap didn't waver.

"You knew—you weren't supposed to bring him—"

"But I'm so happy you came, Captain," Faustus said warmly. "You, my friend, are the one to control. James proved resistant to my voice, yet I'm sure you'll be more open to helping me. _Now, take his gun and_—"

Before he could finish the sentence, the Winter Soldier jerked the gun up and fired it twice into the window which exploded outward. The sound of the weapon firing and breaking glass drowned out whatever Faustus was going to say and it _irked _the doctor. Sam could see it in the man's face. Not just the interruption, but that it had been the work of a moment for Bucky to completely interfere with his vocal powers.

"Discharging a weapon in a white-collar area, soldier?" Faustus said tightly, coming away from his desk. "They'll have you commended to my care if you're not careful. _Captain, restrain him._"

The super-soldier moved to do so, without a word, without resisting, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be doing. When Sam moved forward to stop him, Cap no more than glanced at him before kicking him across the room to land heavily against a bookshelf. The Winter Soldier let Cap begin to restrain him, the assassin registering only a sort of dulled confusion –until Cap reached out to lower his gun-hand.

Then, it was like a sequence of decisions kicked into motion:

Elbow Cap in the face with the metal arm,

Switch hands with the gun,

Duck under Cap's grab, and

Shoot Faustus in the kneecap.

The doctor went down heavily, shouting in pain, and the Winter Soldier was shoving Cap backwards the way a linebacker would drive an opponent. The metal arm lent him strength but it wasn't enough – Steve stepped back in surprise rather than a true lack of balance. It gave Sam time to cross the room and shove the earplugs at Cap. Steve took them, puzzled, imitating Sam's pantomime of putting the earplugs in.

"_Captain_!" Faustus yelled, managing to get back to one knee with the desk as support. Again, the Winter Soldier was a sequence of motions –

Check Faustus's position,

SHOVE Cap towards the door, with more force than Sam thought the man could summon,

Push Sam after him,

Slam the door behind them, and

Break off the doorknob.

The last wasn't necessary, it wasn't even wise, but Sam was left looking at a sturdy wooden door and the impression that they really weren't wanted right now.

#

"There are five bullets left in this gun. You let him go, you let them _both_ go now, and I don't fill you with them," the Winter Soldier hissed.

"You won't kill me. Off. Now."

The Winter Soldier snarled a profanity and the words that followed were charged with fury and confidence: "I remember you now. Are you proud? Talking to me about the— talking about the experiments. You made your victims look like suicides, you _made your victims commit suicide_. How will it look when it happens to you?"

"You're—"

"I'm a ghost, everyone says. But sometimes ghosts take people back to hell."

"_Your services are no longer required, sidekick_," Faustus rasped. The words struck a potent code in Bucky's memory. It was a trigger phrase, pulling up detailed memories of implanted images. He gripped Faustus's neck – the metal arm was more than strong enough to crush this voice and _wanted_ to, because these words were familiar.

An untested trigger code – 'end the Winter Soldier's services.'

End the Winter Soldier.

Eliminate whatever was left of the person once known as James Buchanan Barnes.

But an untested code, no matter how many images and self-loathing statements and obedience-priorities had been implanted, wasn't as strong.

Certainly not as strong as keeping the reality that was Doctor Faustus pinned to the floor of a real office building, with a real alarm blaring, with a real pair of superheroes just outside the door. He clung to it, even as his grip on the doctor's throat tightened.

"I'm… not… going…" Bucky said.

"_Your services are no longer required, sidekick."_

"I got a funeral a long time ago, nothing here to kill," Bucky managed and the words came like a confession. Agh. "Only stepped up 'cause you attacked Cap."

Wait. Wait, there was something there. Something illegal. Something Cap and Sam could take him in for. The fingers loosened slightly, metal creaking at the infinitesimal movement. Don't overreact. There is a reason to bring him in; maybe you don't have to kill him.

"You attacked Cap. Cap did nothing to you."

Important. Important, people couldn't do that; people couldn't just attack people and walk away in the real world.

"Your point? You're a vigilante, James, and wanted by everyone wearing a badge. You can't take me in and the pair of _them_ can barely admit they're down here, much less violate the American way and bring me in under suspicion of doing something they can't explain or prove. Every way this works out badly for you."

"I…" Ah, the logic of it was falling apart. Shooting him again in the kneecap wasn't going to help. "I… you can't practice, not with what—who—you are…"

"Indeed, James, I am a 'who.' You are the 'what' here. The ghost."

"You can't practice though." Clinging to the statement, Bucky dragged the doctor to his feet, the other man groaning in pain. He had to keep repeating the words in case they slipped away. "You can't be out and about."

"I'll walk right out of prison, James," Faustus said. "And I've done my work with Cap. I can end him when I want, place him where I want, with just a phone call. You'll spend years second-guessing his motivations just as he'll spend years guessing yours – keeping the spy in the cold for fear of what I might do with _you_—"

That did it. He lifted the gun again and put it to the doctor's head.

The block was screaming at him that he couldn't kill Faustus and it wasn't wrong. It was both sides of him, the Bucky and the Soldier, screaming that this was not just something he had been programmed not to do: this was murder. Murder without trial or justice. Don't do it, don't do it, we are not at war; you'll make everything worse.

_How could anything be worse than this?_

Trying to defy programming was like that day on the helicarrier, watching Steve fall. Independent thought was like trying to trace words during the aftermath of an explosive shell; everything bleeding quiet around it as people's lives fell apart.

As they stood there, Faustus staunchly denying that he could do it, and Bucky clicking the safety off the gun, one of them broke.

Faustus said something as Bucky stood there, the gun to the doctor's head, a brief sentence that Bucky was never able to remember afterwards. It was like a second shell dropping within the concussion of the first. The hush shook upon itself and extended its reach – the trigger phrase for his memories.

Everything came in on him then, a wave of images and colors over the past several decades. Faustus shoved him backwards as he made a break for the door and Bucky caught himself against the desk. Papers fell. Noiseless, flippy things without weight or bearing. He stared at them as they settled on the floor. The door to the office banged open, visible only in the flipping over of several of the papers.

#

The moment the doctor came hobbling out the office door, Cap came at him like a train taking down a street sign. It wasn't as if Faustus could truly move with the bullet in his leg, so he held up a single hand and yelled: "_Stop_!"

Against earplugs, it was no contest: the psychiatrist was in custody and gagged within a minute. Sam pushed the office door open wider, glancing inside for Bucky. The room stood empty, draft whistling in through the broken window.

"He went out the window," he called back to Cap, who was taking out his earplugs.

Cap looked down at Faustus, who was sitting against the wall and stiffly favoring his knee. Noticing that he had the super-soldier's attention, Faustus smiled tightly, the area around his eyes crinkling even if he couldn't speak. Cap crouched in front of him, watching closely.

"The memories weren't a bluff."

The doctor shook his head.

Cap sighed heavily and looked down the hallway with something less than the confident manner he had entered with.

"He'll be fine," Sam said, though it was tricky to say the same of Cap. The idiot running off had just confirmed in Cap's mind that Bucky didn't want to see him and that it would be because of the fall. Sam put a hand on the super-soldier's shoulder and gestured towards the elevator.

"Come on. I think we can take the elevator this time."

Cap's thoughts aside, if Bucky didn't want to see him right now, it probably had little to do with Bucky blaming **_him_.**

#

Forty-five minutes slipped by before Bruce saw anyone other than office workers and the fire trucks that responded to the alarm going off. No Sam, no Cap, and no one-armed assassins. Tony had even begun texting to ask what was going on and if they had apprehended Faustus yet, because 'it really shouldn't be that hard to get a fat man into a chokehold. We're talking about Cap here.'

The first sign of the trio Bruce saw was the Winter Soldier, moving stealthily across the parking lot. Well, not quite 'stealthily,' – covert limping was a better term. Moving slowly, keeping to the lengthening shadows of the buildings, until he spotted Bruce's car. Then it was out from the shadows, across the parking lot, and a metal finger tapping on the glass. To save time, Bruce pushed open the door rather than rolling down the window. The Winter Soldier took a couple of quick steps backwards.

"I shot you in the shoulder," the Winter Soldier said, before Bruce could say anything and the tone alone caught him short of saying anything caustic. The assassin sounded contrite. Not devastated, there had been planning behind the shot, but apologetic that he had done what he had done.

"Yeah," Bruce said carefully. "The big guy took care of it."

"I'm sorry though." The assassin said the words like a hard-won privilege and they probably were. Accept this, Bruce thought suddenly. Accept it and move on. He shrugged with the other shoulder and gestured back at the medical arts building to change the subject.

"Not the first time. Where are Cap and—"

"It is the first time. I haven't shot you before." The Winter Soldier took hold of the top of the open car door with his metal hand, though whether this was for support or to intimidate, Bruce wasn't sure. Didn't matter, there was nothing to be worried about here. Stay calm.

"No, but not the first time I've been **_shot_**," Bruce said easily. "Where are Cap and Falcon?"

"With the doctor. With Faustus. With Dr. Johnann Fennhoff. They're coming." The names disoriented him but the assassin pulled it together, looked over his shoulder. "I'm not, though. I'm finding my own way home."

"You even know where we are?" Bruce asked, feeling incredulous and hearing it seep into his tone.

"Chesapeake. I got myself here, I'll get back."

"You're limping. You're a wanted man. Melodramatically staggering off is going to panic everybody and throw you back ten steps in recovery. Get in the car."

The assassin's grip on the door tightened.

"Don't tell me what to do."

Control was the key. Bruce couldn't yell at him, couldn't use the Hulk to stuff the idiot in the truck, and wasn't quite sure he could stuff the assassin in the back on his own. Hand-to-hand, he wasn't terrific or even passable. The Winter Soldier was going to win this round because, even limping, he could take Bruce Banner, physicist extraordinaire.

"At least tell Cap," Bruce said finally.

"Wouldn't be talking to you if I was going to do that. I'll talk to him in a few days, need to clear my—" He paused, as if running through words. "Just… to get things in order. Keep him safe. Keep everybody… alive."

He released the door with a grating of steel. "Sorry. Sorry."

The assassin retreated faster than Bruce could or wanted to follow. That threat was still there; that the Winter Soldier would draw him into a fight and antagonize him to get away. The thought burned in the back of his throat, the fear of blacking out into the other guy, and the dormant frustration with Hawkeye for ditching him in Chesapeake.

By the time Sam and Cap got out, a gagged and hands-tied Faustus in tow, Bucky was long gone.

"Did he say where? Did he say anything?" Cap demanded.

"He'll talk to you in a few days. He…" Bruce glanced at the silent Faustus. "He got his memories back didn't he."

The psychologist nodded, eyes crinkling with what-must-be a grim smile. Cap looked about to punch the man in the face, but that was well out of the purview of truth, justice, and the American way.

"He'll be fine, Cap. He seemed… on top of it."

#

At least one more chapter?


	12. Chapter 12

Nat and Clint were playing a game as they sped down Highway 13 in a borrowed black Mazda, a tight little car that had made good time on the five or six freeways they had traveled as they went from Manhattan to Chesapeake.

"Now, that is the saddest hitchhiker," Clint said.

"Which—oh." Nat stared, then slowed down abruptly. "No, that's him."

"We're gonna pick him up—?"

"Tony said it's your mess, you come find him."

The Mazda made an impossibly tight u-turn on the highway to turn the same way as the hitchhiker, a man in his late twenties or early thirties, wearing a long-sleeved coat despite the warm weather. Nat pulled up alongside him and coasted as Clint rolled down his window.

"Hey soldier. Want a ride?"

"Barton." Bucky stared at him, then at the driver. He seemed to stop functioning then; if there was a way for him to look more lost, yet more found, there was no way to express it. It was the face of a child at the bottom of a well, looking up to see a caring adult with a flashlight. He didn't say her name though and, caught out in the expression, shifted his gaze to the back of the car.

"You got room?"

"Door's unlocked."

Nat, Clint had discovered, had figured out who Bucky was to her weeks ago. Months now. She had closeted herself away with missions and kept away from the hunt for Bucky because she didn't know if he would ever remember her. Even now, she let the Winter Soldier get in the back of the car with hardly a flinch, thought her posture still sang with tension. For Bucky's part, he laid down across the three back seats, facing the ceiling. Clint couldn't blame him; the sky had a kaleidoscope of colored clouds and it was less terrifying than watching Natasha drive.

It was forty-five minutes before the assassin spoke again.

"God, Natalia, I tried to kill you."

"Yeah, I didn't recognize you either," Nat said. "Get some sleep."

#

Edit: Please convey your gratitude to Cassy and Fire Fly Freiya, who were kind enough to point out that this whole chapter posted as html gibberish and I suddenly remembered why and I don't always get along. : \ THANK YOU BOTH.

Original author notes: Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I had to rework it in order to try and end it, and this is as far as I got really.

Sorry. (Also, post-credit scenes kind of ruined me for imagination station. I just want it to be Civil War time.)

Thank you SO much to everyone who enjoyed, reviewed, and/or pointed out things that made no ever-loving-sense, you helped me try and make this fic better. J And oh my God, some of you have been waiting for a conclusion since like December. If I stumble upon a better way to tie it up, I'll post it, but most of my energy has been into making this more understandable and plot-consistent. Hopefully it works better now.


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